Already a subscriber? Make sure to log into your account before viewing this content. You can access your account by hitting the “login” button on the top right corner. Still unable to see the content after signing in? Make sure your card on file is up-to-date.

A Manhattan federal court has sentenced former Taliban commander Haji Najibullah to 42 years in prison for the 2008 kidnapping of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Rohde.

Getting into it: US District Judge Katherine Polk Failla handed down the sentence, plus five years of supervised release, on Tuesday, after Najibullah pleaded guilty in April 2025 to hostage taking and providing material support for acts of terrorism resulting in death. A commander in Afghanistan’s Wardak Province between 2007 and 2009, the 50-year-old also led Taliban fighters who carried out attacks on US forces.

More details on what he did: The kidnapping occurred in November 2008, when Rohde, then a reporter for The New York Times, was lured by the promise of an interview and seized at gunpoint along with his interpreter and driver. The three were held for roughly seven months in Taliban-controlled areas of Pakistan under armed guard and forced to make ransom calls and proof-of-life videos, in one of which Rohde pleaded for his life with a machine gun pointed at his head. Rohde and his interpreter eventually escaped by using a rope to climb down a compound wall while guards slept, an experience he recounted in his 2010 book.

Separately, fighters under Najibullah’s command ambushed a US military convoy in June 2008, killing three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter, an attack he claimed responsibility for, though his lawyers disputed that he directed it. Prosecutors pushed for a life sentence, calling his conduct depraved, while the defense sought 18 years and described him as “a human being with a complicated story.”

Rohde confronted his captor in court, condemning hostage-taking as “a cruel and cowardly crime” and accusing Najibullah of refusing to take responsibility and lying repeatedly, including by falsely branding him a spy rather than a journalist. After naming the service members killed, Rohde told the court, “I couldn’t be prouder of being part of this profession.”

Najibullah, for his part, read a prepared apology saying he deeply regretted his role, before going on to list the ways he said he had suffered through what he described as “this ordeal.”

In a statement, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “Those who harm Americans and engage in acts of terrorism will be hunted down and brought to justice, no matter how long it takes. As a Taliban commander, Najibullah supported brutal terrorist attacks that killed American servicemembers and orchestrated the savage hostage-taking of an American journalist and Afghan civilians. Today’s sentence delivers justice for the victims and their families.”