Islamabad: Pakistan has arrested the head of a militant group, accused of masterminding kidnapping of three UN workers in Afghanistan in October 2004, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said today (Dec 11, 2004).

Syed Akbar Agha, the Chief of militant group Jaishul Muslimeen, was arrested yesterday (Dec 10, 2004) in Karachi following a tip-off, Rashid said, but gave no further details.

Media reports in Islamabad said that he was arrested following a tip off from his close lieutenants who developed differences with him over sharing of the $ 1.5 million ransom amount received by Agha for releasing the three UN election workers - Irish woman Annette Flanigan, Shqipe Hebibi of Kosovo and Filipino diplomat Angelito Nayan - last month after keeping them captive for over three weeks.

US Military authorities or the Afghan Government could ask Pakistan to hand over Agha to them for putting him on trial for his alleged role in the kidnapping of the three UN election workers, they said.

Some of Agha's former Afghan colleagues, who quit Jaishul Muslimeen after accusing him of pocketing $ 1.5 million in ransom, claimed that their ex-boss was picked up by Pakistani intelligence officers from a Karachi, the reports said.

Two of Agha's lieutenants - Jaishul Muslimeen's military commander Mulla Ishaq and one of the spokesmen of the group Khalid Agha - had gone underground after the release of the UN hostages. Agha too had gone into hiding, though he emerged later to deny the allegations that he took money to release the hostages.

Another Jaishul Muslimeen spokesman Habib Noorzad told the 'The News' daily that the man picked up by the Pakistani security forces was Hafiz Abdul Karim and not Agha.

"They are holding the wrong man. The person in their custody is a former Mujahideen fighter Hafiz Abdul Karim of Afghanistan's Arghastan area in Kandahar province," he said.

But, Pakistani officials said that they were certain that the person under their detention was Agha.

Some reports said Agha, whose group claimed a number of attacks on US and Afghan troops and accepted responsibility for some kidnapping incidents including those of Indian road construction workers in Zabul province, was arrested along with his family in a raid in Karachi and later his wife and children were released.

Agha is a former Afghan Mujahideen commander who joined the Taliban movement in 1995. He served as the Taliban military commander in the then frontline at Maidan Shahr, capital of Wardak province west of Kabul, for 11 months before his removal.

He had developed differences with the Taliban leader Mulla Mohammad Omar and had to go into obscurity during the later years when Taliban were in power.

He told the Pakistani media a few months ago that he launched the Jaishul Muslimeen in December 2001 after the fall of the Taliban regime to fight the US-led forces in Afghanistan.