Flashback: US Court Rules Taliban Five Detainee Traded for Bergdahl was “Too Dangerous” for Release

Qatar extended the travel ban for Obama’s Taliban Dream Team on Sunday.
Barack Obama released the Gitmo Five last year in exchange for US deserter Bowe Bergdahl.
taliban detainees
The five Taliban prisoners in the proposed exchange are from top left: Mohammad Nabi Omari, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Mullah Norullah Noori, Mullah Mohammad Fazl, Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa. (NY Times)

bowe bergdahl taliban
The Gitmo terrorists were released in exchange for deserter Bowe Bergdahl who walked off his post in Afghanistan.

The five top Taliban leaders released by Obama last year in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl were set to be released and free to travel on June 1st. But a last minute deal between the Obama administration and Qatar kept the travel ban on the dangerous Taliban members.

Khairkhwa
A federal judge ruled in 2011 that Khairulla Said Wali Khairkhwa was too dangerous to be released from Gitmo.

Obama released him anyway.

A federal court in 2011 ruled that Khairulla Said Wali Khairkhwa, a former Taliban leader, was too dangerous to consider releasing.
The Daily Mail reported:

In 2011 a federal judge ruled that one of the five Taliban terror leaders traded by the White House for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl nine days ago was too dangerous to consider releasing, even if he had little chance of ever receiving a trial.

The same Obama administration that downplayed the likelihood Khairulla Said Wali Khairkhwa could return to the battlefield against the U.S. argued three years ago that he should be denied habeas corpus rights and kept locked away in an orange jumpsuit at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

The U.S. solicitor general’s office, arguing on behalf of the president – the named defendant in a federal lawsuit – told the court that Khairkhwa was in the class of terrorists who were actively involved in the leadership of a group that killed Americans.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina wrote that ‘[t]he government contends that the petitioner, a former senior Taliban official, is lawfully detained because he was part of Taliban forces and purposefully and materially supported such forces in hostilities against the United States.’

He was also ‘a member of the Taliban’s highest governing body, the Supreme Shura,’ the judge wrote, and ‘was a close associate of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who appointed him Governor of the province of Herat in 1999.’

News of the apparent flip-flop in U.S. policy was reported by The Weekly Standard on its blog.

Obama released him anyway.

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Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.

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