A man has been arrested for the murder of the British-Swedish radio journalist Nils Horner in Kabul last year, according to a Reuters report. Afghanistan’s main spy agency announced that it has detained the commander of a Taliban splinter group Mahaz-e-Fedaiyan (Suicide Front) but did not name him.
Horner, 51, who worked for Swedish Radio, was shot dead last March. Two weeks later, Mahaz-e-Fedaiyan claimed responsibility for the crime and accused Horner of being an MI6 spy.
Hassib Sediqi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, said the suspect was found with two pistols, two time bombs and a silencer.
The Swedish embassy in Afghanistan said details of the arrest would be passed to investigators in Sweden who, according to The Local, have been working closely with the Afghan spy agency.
But the arrest is said to have taken the Swedish embassy by surprise. Anne Lagercrantz, a director of Swedish Radio’s news service, Ekot, said it was “too soon to celebrate with so many questions still left unanswered.
“We certainly hope that those responsible are brought to justice but this latest information is still very uncertain”.
Mahaz-e-Fedaiyan, which is officially regarded as a terrorist organisation by the Afghan government, claimed responsibility for the murder of a provincial governor in eastern Afghanistan in autumn 2013.
And the group’s leader, Haji Najibullah, is also believed to have been responsible for the kidnapping in 2008 of the New York Times journalist David Rohde.
