He came to New York in 2005 to meet with American officials, lured, he said, by two government contractors who said the Americans wanted to talk with him about terrorism financing, and promised him safe passage home. Instead, after 11 days of talks with federal agents, he was arrested.
Mr. Noorzai’s lawyer, Ivan S. Fisher, said that his client, who once led a force of mujahedeen fighters in the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, had helped the United States recover Stinger missiles that the C.I.A. had provided to the Afghan rebels.
After the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Noorzai’s tribe collected and gave the American authorities thousands of Taliban weapons. “He asked for not a dime — zero,” Mr. Fisher said.
The circumstances of his arrival in New York, where he was arrested, were “certainly unusual to say the least,” Judge Chin said.
But the judge added: “I can’t second-guess the government on whether it should have embraced Mr. Noorzai more, or whether it did the right thing in arresting him.”
A federal prosecutor, Anirudh Bansal, questioned whether Mr. Noorzai, who provided money and arms to the Taliban, had been “a friend” to the United States, saying that he had been overheard on a telephone call in 2002 describing this country as “my enemy.”
Mr. Bansal said Mr. Noorzai was motivated by a “mercenary instinct” to bolster his power Just like the thousands of US Military Contractors , and any assistance “has to be viewed against the backdrop of all of the harm that his conduct caused.”
