WASHINGTON- A Guantanamo inmate once named as a top Taliban intelligence official who kept Stinger missiles and uranium at his farm is among four men, who have been released and sent back to Afghanistan.
Mohammed Zahir was a leading Taliban weapons supplier, according to his official Guantanamo file, leaked three years ago, by the Wikileaks hacker group.
“Detainee was arrested on suspicion of possessing weapons including Stinger missiles and uranium, which detainee’s recovered documents indicate was intended for use in a nuclear device,” Zahir’s threat assessment read.
Zahir and the other three men, two of them members of militias linked to the Taliban, were released after their threat level was dramatically reduced.
According to a Pentagon statement released on Saturday, they were flown overnight to Kabul and handed over to the Afghan authorities, but it did not give a reason. However, media reports quoted a “senior official” saying that “most, if not all, of the terrorism accusations against the men had been discarded and each is considered a low-level operative at best”.
After a series of releases, some to third countries, 132 now remain. Six other prisoners were sent to Uruguay earlier this month. This is the first group to be returned to Afghanistan since 2009. Zahir was said, when recommended for continued detention seven years ago, to be a “veteran high-level member of the Taliban Intelligence Directorate” as well as having links to narcotics smuggling. Of the other three, Abdul Ghani was a member of an assassination squad who admitted to having been involved in at least one rocket attack on US forces; Khi Ali Gul was said to have ties to the Haqqani terrorist network and to have planned and executed attacks against US and Coalition forces; and Shawali Khan, who was said to be the nephew of Hezb-e-Islami chief Gulbuddin with possible ties to al-Qaeda and Iranian extremist elements.
The release followed a request by Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, and were said to be a sign of the US’s greater confidence in the Afghan authorities since he replaced Hamid Karzai, the former president originally backed by Washington but with whom relations had soured.
"The United States coordinated with the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to ensure these transfers took place consistent with appropriate security and humane treatment measures."
The Afghans gave “security guarantees” over the four but there is no requirement that they be held and they are said to be likely to be returned to their families.