Brother of slain Taliban chief's driver sues US

The brother of a man who was killed alongside the Taliban's slain chief Mullah Akthar Mansour in an American drone strike in southwest Pakistan is pressing murder and terrorism charges against US officials, police said yesterday.

Mansour was travelling by car near the town of Ahmad Wal on May 21 when he was killed, a major blow to the Islamist group that has been waging a guerilla war in Afghanistan since being toppled from power in 2001.

US officials described the car's driver as a "second male combatant" but according to Pakistani security officials he was a chauffeur named Mohammad Azam who worked for the Al Habib rental company based out of Quetta, the region's main city.

His brother, Mohammad Qasim, said Azam was an innocent man who was providing for his four children and had been murdered.

"US officials whose name I do not know accepted responsibility in the media for this incident, so I want justice and request legal action against those responsible for it," Qasim said in a police report dated May 25, a copy of which was seen by AFP.

"My brother was innocent, he was very poor and he has left behind four small children. He was the lone breadwinner in the family," he added.

"My aim is to prove the innocence of my brother as he is being portrayed as a militant, but he was just a driver," Qasim told AFP on the telephone.

Local police and administration officials on Sunday confirmed charges had been filed, but declined to comment on what steps authorities would take to pursue the case, if any.

Meanwhile a spokesman from Pakistan's Interior Ministry Sunday confirmed Mansour's killing following a DNA match with one of his relatives who had come from Afghanistan to take the body.