KABUL, Afghanistan, May 26 (UPI) -- The former foreign minister of Afghanistan's Taliban government has announced plans to run for office again in September.
Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil was held for two years at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, including eight months in solitary confinement, and was released a year ago only to be put under house arrest by the administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Now, he is running for parliament in Kandahar, the city where the fundamentalist Taliban movement began in 1994, the Washington Times reported.
"When you look back at our rule, there were good and bad points," he said. "People remember them, and they like some of the things we did -- security, the eradication of opium poppy and the fact that there was far less corruption in government."
Mutawakil served first as private secretary to leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and then as the foreign minister as the group rose to rule Afghanistan under strict Islamic governance.
He surrendered to U.S. forces in 2002.
