The Afghan Taliban movement said yesterday the Saudi dissident, Mr Osama Bin Laden, was not involved in the US embassy bombings in east Africa, and it would refuse to extradite him.
The Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, also vowed to defend Mr Osama, a multimillionaire living in exile in Afghanistan, against any attack, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported.
"Even if all the countries of the world unite, we would defend Osama by our blood," Mr Omar told AIP from his headquarters in the Afghan city of Kandahar.
The Taliban leader insisted Mr Osama was not involved in the simultaneous truck-bomb attacks on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam on August 7th.
Mr Osama, who was previously stripped of his Saudi citizenship, has been named as a prime suspect in two bombings in Saudi Arabia which killed 24 US servicemen and two Indians and wounded more than 400 people in 1995 and 1996.
A suspect in the African bombings arrested in Karachi and sent to Nairobi last week told his Pakistani captors that Mr Osama financed and ran a global terrorist network aimed at US interests, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The man said the network involved 4,000 to 5,000 militants across the Islamic world, the paper reported.
But the man, identified by US authorities as Mr Mohammed Saddiq Odeh, has denied involvement in the African bombing, Kenyan and US investigators have said.
Mr Omar said Mr Osama was under constant observation by the Taliban and had strict orders not to communicate with the outside world or indulge in any sort of subversive activity abroad.
Afghanistan's Taliban government said yesterday it would "smash Tehran's teeth in its mouth", if Iran resorted to military action to release its nationals held by the Taliban militia.