2 ex-Guantanamo Bay inmates to return to Afghanistan Monday

By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) - Two former Guantanamo Bay prison inmates are set to return to their home country, Afghanistan, from Oman on Monday, a Taliban official said.

The two Afghan nationals, Mullah Abdul Zahir Sabir and Abdul Kareem, who had been arrested in 2002, were released from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in 2017, and shifted to an unspecified locality in Oman, where they remained "under surveillance and without travel permission," Interior Ministry spokesman Mufti Abdul Mateen said in a statement on Sunday.

"It has been agreed that two Afghan nationals will return to their homeland tomorrow (Monday)," Mateen added.

US-led foreign forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and quickly ousted the then Taliban regime, following 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people.

After fighting their longest war in recent history, the US forces pulled out of Afghanistan days before the Taliban re-captured Kabul in Aug. 2021.