Ex-Guantanamo detainee, now ruler of Kabul
Khairullah Khairkhwa, who served as Taliban interior minister in 1997-98, was arrested by the Pakistani military and subsequently handed over to the CIA. In 2002 he was imprisoned at the naval base that the US illegally occupies in Guántanamo Bay, Cuba.
For 12 years, he was subjected to the tortures devised by Professor Martin Seligman on the model of the experiments carried out by Doctor Albert D. Biderman after the Korean War. Such treatments were not meted out for the purpose of obtain information, but to condition the subject by instilling in his mind certain patterns of behavior1.
In 2014, Khairullah Khairkhwa was released along with three other detainees - on order of President Barack Obama - in exchange for the release of Private Bowe Bergdahl, which was hailed by then Afghan President Hamid Karzai as a gesture a peace.
However, it quickly transpired that Bergdahl had been captured by the Taliban after deserting his post in the US Army. He was therefore tried by general court martial and sentenced to be dishonorably discharged.
In early 2021, Khairullah Khairkhwa joined the Taliban delegation at the US-China-Russia peace negotiations in Moscow. There he made a sensational declaration explaining that he would continue in the Jihad until victory.
On 15 August 2021, after the Afghan president fled, he was among the group of Talibans that seized the presidency of the Islamic Republic in Kabul.
- Source : Voltaire Network
