New York ? A Taliban-linked drug lord who allegedly sought to poison U.S. streets with millions of dollars of heroin in a deadly “American jihad” has become the first person extradited from Afghanistan to face federal charges, officials said Monday.

Haji Baz Mohammad, one of the world’s “most wanted, most powerful and most dangerous” drug kingpins, had helped finance the Taliban by selling opium since 1990, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administrator Karen Tandy said.

“In return, the Taliban protected Mohammad’s crops, his heroin labs, his drug transportation labs and his associates,” Tandy said after a conspiracy indictment was unsealed accusing Mohammad of smuggling more than $25 million of heroin into the United States and elsewhere.

The defendant was arrested in Afghanistan in January and arrived in the United States on Friday, authorities said.

According to the indictment, Mohammad told associates at his home in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1990 that selling heroin was a form of jihad, or Islamic holy war, because they were taking money from Americans while giving them something that was killing them.