A former Taliban commander has been sentenced to 42 years in prison for supporting attacks that killed three American soldiers and for his role in the kidnapping of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Rudd and two others in Afghanistan.The ruling was handed down on Tuesday in Manhattan. It approaches a case that combined terrorism, hostage-taking and the killing of American soldiers during the war in Afghanistan.Hajj Najibullah, 50, pleaded guilty in April 2025 to providing material support for terrorist acts and conspiring to take hostages. He supplied the Taliban with weapons and other support between 2007 and 2009, knowing that they would be used in attacks against US forces.The case took an emotional turn during the sentencing hearing when journalist David Rudd, now a national security correspondent for MSNBC and previously working for The New York Times, addressed the court while standing a few feet away from Najibullah.Rudd recalls how he was lured into interviewing a Taliban leader in Afghanistan in 2008, only to be kidnapped along with another journalist and a driver. The three men were detained for more than seven months before they escaped from a Taliban-controlled compound in Pakistan’s tribal region.
He told the court he was “surprised and disappointed” that Najibullah was trying to shift the blame for the kidnapping. Rudd said it was Najibullah’s lies that led him into the trap.“Hostage-taking is a cruel and cowardly crime. Family members spend weeks and months believing they have the power to save the lives of their loved ones,” Rudd said, adding that it is an “illusion” because families rarely have the money to meet ransom demands.Rudd said his suffering was less important than the deaths of the three American soldiers who were killed in a separate Taliban operation linked to Najibullah’s group. He became emotional as he named the soldiers and spoke about the impact of their deaths.Speaking through an interpreter, Najibullah apologized to Rudy and his family, saying: “What happened to him was terrible, and I deeply regret my role in it.”U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla said she chose not to impose the life prison sentence recommended under federal guidelines.
She cited Najibullah’s guilty plea, which spared victims from trial, and the harsh prison conditions he endured for six years, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.However, she also rejected the lenient sentence. Najibullah’s lawyer had asked for an 18-year prison sentence, arguing that his client was acting to defend his homeland during the war.“I don’t think he needed to pull the trigger, or decapitate a body, to be responsible for what happened,” Failla said, referring to the deadly attacks carried out by fighters under his command.Rudy said agreeing to the interview in which he was kidnapped was “the biggest mistake of my life,” and said he would not have done so if he had known that Najibullah was linked to the attacks that killed American soldiers.The journalist also rejected his kidnappers’ claims that he was a spy.He told the court that he was a “journalist” seeking to understand the views and lives of Taliban leaders. Rudd also said he remains “a journalist and I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this profession.”