Afghan Taliban threaten to kidnap and kill Prince Harry

KABUL – The Afghan Taliban said on Monday they were doing everything in their power to try to kidnap or kill Britain’s Prince Harry, who arrived in Afghanistan last week to fly attack helicopters.

 

A Taliban spokesman said that the terror group would use “all our strength” to kidnap or kill the U.K’s Prince Harry, who has just begun serving a four-month tour of duty as a chopper pilot in Afghanistan.

“We are using all our strength to get rid of him, either by killing or kidnapping,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by phone. “We have informed our commanders in Helmand to do whatever they can to eliminate him.”

Mujahid made the same threat in an interview with Agence France Presse, saying the Taliban had a “high-value plan” to get the prince. “It is not important for us to kidnap him,” he said. “We will target him and we will kill him.”

Prince Harry, known as Captain Wales in the British Army, is stationed at Camp Bastion in Helmand province, on the front line. Harry also served a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2008, though it was cut short because of publicity. The 27-year-old son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana is third in line to the throne, after his father and his older brother William.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he was not worried about the Taliban threat against Prince Harry.

“That’s not a matter of concern,” said Rasmussen as a press conference in Brussels. “We do everything we can to protect all our troops deployed to Afghanistan, whatever might be their personal background.”

Harry was in the news last month after he was captured on film partying naked with friends in Las Vegas.

Britain