Haji Najibullah once commanded more than a thousand Taliban militants who waged a ruthless insurgency against U.S. and Afghan enemies.
In summer 2008, federal prosecutors say, some of those fighters attacked a U.S. military convoy, killing three American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter. Three months later, Mr. Najibullah’s men destroyed an Afghan border patrol outpost, an indictment said.
A month after that, Mr. Najibullah’s forces shot down a U.S. military helicopter, the indictment said. And then Mr. Najibullah took part in the kidnapping of an American journalist and two Afghan men and demanded millions of dollars and the freeing of Taliban prisoners as their ransom.
On Friday, Mr. Najibullah entered a courtroom in Manhattan wearing tan prison garb and a dark-colored skullcap, with his wrists and ankles shackled. He then pleaded guilty to hostage-taking and providing material support for terrorism.
Mr. Najibullah, who told the judge he was “about 49,” could finish his life in prison. He is to be sentenced in October.
His appearance, before Judge Katherine Polk Failla, of Federal District Court, came nearly 20 years after the actions described in an indictment. It came nearly five years after Mr. Najibullah was brought to the United States from Ukraine and arrested in the kidnapping of the American reporter, David Rohde, then of The New York Times, and nearly four years after he was charged with four counts of murder and other crimes for the 2008 attack.