Khairullah Said Wali Khairkhwa ( ; born 1967) is the Afghan Minister of Information and Culture and a former Minister of the Interior. After the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, he was held at the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba for 12 years. He was released in late May 2014 in a prisoner exchange that involved Bowe Bergdahl and the Taliban five. Press reports have referred to him as "Mullah" and "Maulavi", two different honorifics for referring to senior Muslim clerics.<ref name=Io
Claims from analysts at Guantanamo that Khairkhwa was directly associated with Osama bin Laden and Taliban Supreme Commander Mullah Muhammad Omar have been widely repeated. Kate Clark has criticized her fellow journalists for uncritically repeating U.S. claims that were largely based on unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo, or on confessions and denunciations coerced through torture and other extreme interrogation techniques.
Early life
American intelligence analysts estimate that Khairkhwa was born in 1967 in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He is from the Arghistan District in Kandahar province and belongs to the Popalzai tribe. He studied at the Darul Uloom Haqqania Islamic seminary (darul uloom or madrasa) at Akora Khattak in Pakistan, where many other Taliban leaders also studied. He was affiliated with Mohammad Nabi Mohammadi's Islamic Revolution Movement (Harakat-i-Inqilab-i-Islami) during the Soviet–Afghan War.
Khairullah was one of the original members of the Taliban in 1994 and was a spokesman for them from 1994 to 1996. He was chief of police after the Taliban took control of Kabul in 1996. He was the Minister of the Interior under Taliban rule in 1997 and 1998, with Abdul Samad Khaksar, also called Mohammad Khaksar, as deputy minister.
Some reports have said he had been the Taliban's deputy minister of the interior, interim minister of the interior, the minister of the interior, and the Minister of Information. Khirullah was also to serve as the Taliban's Minister of Foreign Affairs spokesman, giving interviews to the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Voice of America. He was the Governor of Herat Province from 1999 to 2001.
Kate Clark, then of the BBC News, interviewed Khairkhwa in September 2000. Clark wrote that Khairkhwa was comfortable conversing in the Dari language when most Taliban leaders, all members of Afghanistan's Pashtun ethnic group, would only speak in the Pashtun language. She wrote that under Khairkhwa, she was allowed to film openly in Herat, even though doing so was disallowed under Taliban law. She wrote that under Khairkhwa, Afghan women felt comfortable approaching her, and speaking with her, something that rarely happened in other regions of Afghanistan.
According to journalist Mark Mazzetti, in February 2002, Khairkhwa and alleged CIA agent Ahmed Wali Karzai discussed the possibility of Khairkhwa surrendering and informing for the CIA. However, the deal broke down and Khairkhwa fled for Pakistan; the CIA learned of his flight through a communications intercept and the U.S. military dispatched a helicopter-borne commando team to capture Khairkhwa. However, the CIA hoped to allow the Pakistanis to recruit or capture Khairkhwa, which would also boost U.S.-Pakistan relations. Thus, the CIA recalled the drone following Khairkhwa's truck and a second drone pinpointed a different truck, whose innocent occupants were captured and later released. Khairkhwa successfully crossed into Pakistan at Spin Boldak, but after further talks over informing broke down, Khairkhwa was arrested by the Pakistanis in Chaman, transferred to the CIA in Quetta, and then sent to Guantanamo.
Guantanamo Bay internment
Khirullah Khairkhwa arrived at the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba on May 1, 2002.
Official status reviews
Originally, the Bush Presidency asserted that captives apprehended in the "war on terror" were not covered by the Geneva Conventions and could be held indefinitely without charge and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention. In 2004, the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention and were entitled to try to refute them. Following the ruling, the Department of Defense set up the Office for the Administrative Review of Detained Enemy Combatants (OARDEC) in 2004.