Afghan government has issued dozens of passports to families of five senior Afghan Taliban leaders, freed from the U.S. prison Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in May this year, and facilitated them to join them in Qatar, Taliban and Afghan officials privy to the transfer of the families, say.
The Taliban leaders says that the Afghan government had issued 65 Afghan passports to the family members of the Taliban this month that was seen as a move to win some sympathy of the Taliban, who had been unwilling to talk to Karzai regime.
“The Afghan President’s office had facilitated transfer of the family members of the Taliban leaders to Qatar and the government had issued Afghan passports to all,” a Taliban leader said. He requested not to be identified as he is not authorized to speak to the media on the record.
Four families of the Taliban leaders were flown to Dubai from Kabul international airport under tight security this month while the family of former Interior Minister Maulvi Khairullah Khairkhwa had travelled from Islamabad’s Benazir Bhutto International airport, he said. The Khairkhwa family was also issued Afghan passports.
The United States had freed the Taliban detainees in exchange for the release of the only American soldier, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, held prisoner in Afghanistan for nearly five years. Bergdahl had been in the custody of the Haqqani Network the group’s fighters had handed him over to the US special forces somewhere in Khost.
Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar had described the release of ‘the detainees as a ‘great victory, who had been incarcerated for the last 13 years in the infamous Guantanamo detention center.
“The President office had assigned the senior member of the High Peace Council, Masoom Stanakzai, to quickly arrange all required documents and facilitate their journey to the UAE,” an Afghan official said. The Taliban families later proceeded to Qatar from Dubai. Stanakzai, a close relative of an UAE-based Taliban leader, had been previously been involved in contacts with the Taliban.
The official, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that an Afghan security official had been deployed at the airport at the departure of the Taliban family members and they had been given full protocol at the airport.
Those who had been freed include:Khairullah Khairkhwa, the Taliban interior minister, Abdul Haq Wasiq, the Taliban deputy minister of intelligence, Mullah Norullah Nori, a senior Taliban commander in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, Mohammed Nabi, chief of security for the Taliban, and Mohammad Fazal Akhund, the Taliban defence minister.
Diplomatic sources in Islamabad says that the Afghan embassy in Islamabad has also issued passports to some Taliban leaders, who have travelled to Qatar and UAE. “The embassy had previously been reluctant to issue passports to the Taliban leaders but now they issue passports,” they sources said.
Brothers of Taliban’s top negotiators still in Pakistan’s custody:
Afghan Taliban say Pakistani authorities have not yet released two brothers of the Taliban top negotiator in Qatar, Tayyeb Agha, who had been detained in Karachi and Quetta in April, Taliban and Agha’s family sources say.
Pakistan had neither officially confirmed nor explained as to why Younas Agha and Tahir Agha had been taken into custody from Karachi and Quetta. The Taliban had not publicly spoken on the issue since the arrests.
The Taliban sources say that other family members of Tayyeb Agha, including his father, who had been lived for years in Pakistan, have now shifted to Kandahar fearing arrests in Pakistan.
Family members of Tayyeb Agha who had left Pakistan after the arrest of his two brother and had moved to Afghanistan. They have now traveled to Qatar, sources say.
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