The Taliban announced Tuesday the formation of its interim government, which includes an FBI-wanted terrorist as acting interior minister. According to the FBI, Sirajuddin Haqqani is "wanted for questioning in connection with the January 2008 attack on a hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed six people, including an American citizen.
"He is believed to have coordinated and participated in cross-border attacks against United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan," the wanted poster says. "Haqqani also allegedly was involved in the planning of the assassination attempt on Afghan President Hamid Karzai in 2008."
But that's not the only controversial figure now serving in the new government. Four of the "Taliban Five" Guantanamo Bay detainees released in a prisoner swap for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl in 2014 have also been named as part of the fundamentalist group's new government, local media outlets report.
Abdul Haq Wasiq is now acting Director of Intelligence, Norullah Noori is acting Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs, Mohammad Fazl is Deputy Defense Minister, and Khairullah Khairkhah is acting Minister of Information and Culture.
According to assessments written in 2008 by leadership at Guantanamo Bay and later made public by Wikileaks, Wasiq “utilized his office to support [Al Qaeda] and to assist Taliban personnel elude capture” and “was central to the Taliban’s efforts to form alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups to fight alongside the Taliban against U.S. and Coalition forces” in the early days of the Afghanistan war.
The same assessments said that Fazl was alleged to have had “operational associations with significant al Qaeda and other extremist personnel.”
Fazl and Noori, who was governor of two northern Afghan provinces during the earlier Taliban regime, are also accused of ordering the massacres of ethnic Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek communities in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998.
Khairkhah, who helped found the Taliban in 1994, allegedly took part in “meetings with Iranian officials seeking to support hostilities against U.S. and Coalition Forces” following the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, according to the 2008 assessments. He also was the governor of western Herat province between 1999 and 2001 and was known as “one of the major opium drug lords in western Afghanistan,” US military leadership found. (NY Post)
Released from Guantanamo Bay by Obama
— Monica Crowley (@MonicaCrowley) September 8, 2021
Now running Afghanistan thanks to Biden https://t.co/RbKr2mSyLx
