Afghan prisoner swap delayed, says Taliban spokesman
Afghan Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Friday that a prisoner exchange between the US and the Taliban did not take place because the Americans had not released three Taliban leaders. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced on Tuesday that three Taliban prisoners would be released in return for two academics of American and Australian descent who taught at the American University of Afghanistan.
The Taliban have kept the professors, Kevin King and Timothy John Weeks, in captivity since 2016.
Ghani also named the Taliban detainees who included: Anas Haqqani, brother of the Taliban deputy chief, Siraj ud Din Haqqani, his maternal uncle, Mali Khan, and Hafiz Rashid Omari, brother of the Taliban’s political negotiator, Mohammed Nabi Omari.
Mali Khan was arrested by the Americans in eastern Khost province in 2011. Anas, who was inducted in the insurgent group’s negotiating team in February, was captured by US security officials after he visited Qatar in October 2014.
He was accompanied by another Taliban leader, Rashid, who had gone to Qatar to meet five Taliban leaders who had been freed from Guantanamo prison. They were later handed over to the Afghan authorities. In August 2016, an Afghanistan court gave Anas the death sentence. An earlier media report suggested that Taliban prisoners were flown out of Afghanistan and had reached Qatar, where they would be handed over to the Taliban political office. However, Mujahid told Arab News on Friday that the swap did not take place and the Taliban prisoners were still in the Bagram jail in the north of Afghan capital Kabul.