The United States has handed to Pakistan three prisoners including a senior Taliban militant held in Afghanistan, as Washington rushes to empty its Afghan prison before losing the legal right to detain people there at the end of the year.
U.S. forces captured Latif Mehsud, the former number two commander in Pakistan’s faction of the Taliban, in October 2013, in an operation that angered then Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Mehsud, a Pakistani, and his two guards were secretly flown to Pakistan, two senior Pakistani security officials told Reuters. The U.S. military confirmed it transferred three prisoners to Pakistan’s custody on Saturday, but would not reveal their identities.
“TTP senior commander Latif Mehsud who was arrested was handed over to Pakistani authorities along with his guards,” one Pakistani security official said. “They reached Islamabad.”
The transfers coincide with a visit by outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to Afghanistan.
They also follow a spate of U.S. drone strikes against the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Pakistani Taliban, and al-Qaeda. On Saturday, the Pakistani military killed an al-Qaeda commander accused of plotting to bomb the New York subway.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul said the three prisoners had been held at a detention centre near Bagram airfield, the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan.
The facility is believed to house several dozen foreign prisoners who the United States will no longer be allowed to keep in Afghanistan when the mission ends later this month.
The quandary over what to do with the detainees held at the prison north of Kabul has rekindled outrage over the U.S. policy of rendition in the early phases of the Afghan war.
The fate of the remaining prisoners was undecided and they could be returned to their home countries, brought into the U.S. legal system or to the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the commander of the detention centre told Reuters in September.
Afghanistan-Pakistan relations are rocky because each suspects the other of harbouring Taliban insurgents seeking to topple their respective government.
But President Ashraf Ghani’s ascent to power has raised hopes for more cooperation in tackling the insurgency.
