DOHA (TRT World): Mullah Muhammad Nabi Omari was held for nearly twelveyears in the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison, and is today part of theTaliban delegation that met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for theAfghan peace talks.
On September 13, 2020, a former US Guantanamo detainee, Faiz Mohammad AhmedAl Kandari, tweeted out a photo of Mullah Mohammad Nabi Omari in a meetingwith US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the negotiations between theUS and Taliban. Kandari now lives in Kuwait after being released fromGuantanamo in 2016 without ever being charged with war crimes.
He wrote: “I still remember when he (Mullah Muhammad Nabi Omari) said to mewhile we were in the sixth camp, pointing to the sun: My certainty ofrelief and victory is greater than my certainty that this sun is rising, itis a matter of time, and the consequence is for the righteous.”
So who is Omari?
Nabi Omari, is one of the “Taliban Five”, an influential member of theTaliban.
Nabi Omari was born in Khost, Afghanistan, in 1968. He arrived at theinfamous US Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in 2002 and stayed there nearly12 years in extrajudicial detention.
In 2014, he was transferred to Qatar together with four other men known asthe “Taliban Five” in an exchange for US soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, who hadbeen a Taliban prisoner since 2009.
According to the swap deal brokered by the Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad,these five Taliban members, Mohammad Nabi Omari, Abdul Haq Wasiq, MullahNorullah Noori, Mullah Mohammad Fazl and Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, hadto stay in Qatar for one year as a condition of their release.
Today, he is among the delegation taking part in the Afghan peace talkswith the Trump administration.
The five men were senior leaders in the Taliban, according to journalistTahir Khan who tracks the Taliban, and they enjoyed “the trust of the footsoldiers.”
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They had reportedly made great sacrifices for the movement and were“trusted friends” of the Taliban’s founder, Mullah Mohammed Omar, anofficial said.
Trump administration U-turn
In 2015, before becoming president, Donald Trump criticised the prisonerexchange agreement by calling released Taliban members “five killers,” andsaid they were now “back on the battlefield.”
Pompeo, a Congressman for the Republican party at the time, said: “I’veseen nothing that causes me to believe these folks are reformed or [have]changed their ways or intend to re-integrate to society in ways to give meany confidence that they will not return in trying to do harm to America.”
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham wrote: “they have American blood on their hands andsurely as night follows day, they will return to the fight,” in a letter toleaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2014.
“In effect, we released the ‘Taliban Dream Team,’ Graham added.
Fast forward six years and Donald Trump is president and hisadministration, particularly his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is sittingacross the table deciding the future of Afghanistan with a man they saidcould never be reformed.
