Islamabad, Pakistan — The arrest and deportation of the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan appears to have violated international conventions on the treatment of diplomats, legal experts say.
Abdul Salam Zaeef, who became the Taliban's best-known spokesman during the war in Afghanistan, was arrested last week at his Islamabad home by Pakistani intelligence agents, interrogated for two days and ordered to go back to his homeland. After crossing the border, he was detained by anti-Taliban forces who then turned him over to the United States.
He is now among the highest-ranking Taliban officials in U.S. custody. Investigators hope that Zaeef, who is being held on a U.S. ship in the Arabian Sea, will provide clues to the whereabouts of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and possibly Osama bin Laden.
But Zaeef's arrest and expulsion by Pakistan and his detention by the United States may have violated the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, experts say. Even in times of war, the 1961 agreement offers protection to diplomats and diplomatic property.
"Pakistan could be on shaky ground here," said John Quigley, an international law professor at Ohio State University. "Even if a country breaks relations with another government, it can't just send a former diplomat against his will to a place where he's going to be prosecuted."
Experts say U.S. authorities will have a difficult time charging Zaeef with a crime. They note that diplomats have rarely been prosecuted for crimes committed by their governments, even in the Nuremberg trials that followed World War II.
"Generally, the focus of war crimes tribunals is on those directly involved. There's been very little prosecution of government leaders, and certainly not diplomats," Quigley said. "It may well be that there is no precedent for this."
Pakistani officials say Zaeef lost his diplomatic status when Pakistan broke relations with the Taliban government on Nov. 22. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the only nations that recognized the Islamic militia during its five years of rule over most of Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia and the UAE withdrew recognition in September, after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden to the United States.
Zaeef, 34, had asked the Pakistani government for asylum, lodging a formal request with the Foreign Ministry three weeks ago. He insisted that he was only a diplomat who represented his country in Islamabad and held news conferences on the lawn of his embassy to project the Taliban's views during the war.
Pakistani officials privately acknowledge that they detained and expelled Zaeef at the request of the United States. Many former Taliban officials and their families have taken refuge in Pakistan, with the tacit approval of the Pakistani government. A group of six former Taliban officials last month announced in Islamabad that they planned to revive an old Afghan political party.
Unlike Zaeef, many of the former Taliban officials who have been allowed to stay in Pakistan defected from the movement in its last days. Several of them also have publicly criticized Omar for refusing to expel bin Laden. But Zaeef continued to support Omar even after the Taliban lost its last stronghold of Kandahar.
"Zaeef is a childhood friend of Mullah Omar, and he feels bound by that friendship," said Abdul Hakeem Mujahid, the Taliban's former ambassador to the United Nations who defected last month. "Zaeef thinks that we betrayed Mullah Omar by criticizing his actions."
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