Taliban commander who kidnapped American journalist sentenced to 42 years in prison
A Taliban commander who led and directly participated in the hostage-taking of journalist David Rohde and two others was sentenced Tuesday in New York to 42 years in prison.
For more than seven months in 2008, Haji Najibullah and his co-conspirators held Rohde, his Afghan interpreter and their driver in various safehouses in Afghanistan and Pakistan, aiming to extort ransom payments and the release of Taliban prisoners from the U.S.
During that time, Najibullah forced the hostages to film proof-of-life videos during which Taliban fighters pointed automatic weapons at them as they pleaded for their families and the U.S. to meet the Taliban’s demands.
"Every day of their captivity, the hostages and their families lived in fear that they would never see their loved ones again," federal prosecutors in New York said.
Rohde wrote about his captivity and his escape in a 2010 book, "A Rope and a Prayer."
Najibullah served as a Taliban commander in Wardak Province, bordering Kabul, beginning in 2007. He also acted as an unofficial spokesperson for the Taliban.
Taliban fighters under his command carried out ambush-style attacks, particularly when targeting unsuspecting U.S. military convoys, resulting in the deaths of U.S. service members, prosecutors said.
In November 2008, Rohde, then writing for The New York Times, arranged an interview but instead of sitting for it, Najibullah directed his men to kidnap Rohde, his interpreter and driver.
"As they drove to the second location, they were met by Taliban fighters armed with machineguns who kidnapped them, confiscated their cellphones, tied their hands behind their backs, and blindfolded them," prosecutors said.
"At one point during the drive, after [Rohde] told the armed kidnappers that he was American, one of them raised his fist in the air and shouted in Pashto that they were 'going to send a blood message to [President Barack] Obama,'" they added.
After seven months, Rohde and his interpreter escaped a compound where they were being kept by waiting for the guards to sleep and then using a rope to scale down the wall.
Najibullah was arrested in Ukraine, where he had traveled in October 2020.
