Drug Suspect From Pakistan Surrenders

An alleged Pakistani drug baron, wanted on U.S. smuggling and money laundering charges, is in custody after surrendering to U.S. authorities, officials said Monday.

Haji Ayub Afridi flew to the United States Wednesday from Dubai, accompanied by agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Jodi Avergun.

He is accused of smuggling 50 tons of hashish into the United States from Pakistan from 1983 to 1988, Avergun said.

Afridi is also accused of laundering tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits, she said.

Afridi, who was one of the most wanted men on the U.S. extradition list, flew to New York of his own volition to try to clear his name, his nephew said Saturday.

“He is there to surrender to the U.S. government and prove his innocence,” Babu Khan told reporters in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

He said Afridi had made no deal with the U.S. authorities.

Afridi is a chieftain from the lawless areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, where much of the world’s heroin originates. He was elected to Pakistan’s National Assembly in 1990, but his nomination papers for the 1993 parliamentary election were rejected.

This year Pakistan’s anti-narcotics task force seized his assets, including a huge fort-like house in the Khyber Pass. In May a court ordered the confiscation of property owned by Afridi and his family unless he could prove they had not been acquired from drug-smuggling proceeds.

Afridi was indicted in 1992 but could not be extradited because the frontier area where he lives is not subject to the control of the Pakistani government, Avergun said.

He is scheduled to have a bail hearing Wednesday in Brooklyn.