A secret Guantanamo Bay prisoner swap has been stalled by Taliban officials wanting to curry favour with Donald Trump.
Afghan government officials are discussing delaying the exchange until the president-elect takes office later this month, sources told The Telegraph.
The Biden administration is in talks with the Taliban to swap Americans detained in Afghanistan for Muhammad Rahim al-Afghani, an alleged associate of Osama bin Laden who is one of the last remaining Guantanamo prisoners.
“The deal is almost done but there are some top officials in Kandahar who are against it at this moment,” a senior Taliban official said.
“They argue that any deal with Biden will be in vain as he is leaving and want to keep it for Trump.”
It comes as Mr Biden is moving to shut down Guantanamo Bay, freeing a number of detainees and the US moving towards a controversial plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged orchestrator of 9/11.
Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, the Taliban deputy foreign minister, described the president-elect this week as “decisive and courageous” and called for “friendly” relations with the United States.
“Afghanistan, the Islamic Emirate’s field, is open. If they want to become friends, we will shake hands and be friends,” he said.
He added: “We ask Mr Trump that if he wants to have good relations with Afghanistan and solve the problems, we hope he takes some positive steps, comes forward, and we will also go forward [to him].”
Mr Biden’s administration is seeking the return of three Americans seized in 2022 – Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmood Habibi – in exchange for Afghani.
Mr Corbett and Mr Habibi were detained in separate incidents in August 2022 a year after the Taliban seized Kabul amid the chaotic US troop withdrawal. Glezmann was detained later in 2022 while visiting as a tourist.
The negotiations with the Taliban came as a number of other prisoners were freed from the base on Cuba. In a secret operation in the early hours of Monday, 11 Yemeni detainees were freed from Guantanamo Bay and sent to Oman after being held for two decades without charge.
Biden’s final push
The latest prisoner release leaves just 15 people in the military-run camp, which at its peak held almost 800 Muslim men who had been captured by the US in the aftermath of 9/11.
Mr Biden has cut the population of Guantanamo down from 40, much of which has happened in an extraordinary push in his last weeks in office.
Now, international deal-making and court battles are deciding the future of the few remaining inside the naval base, which has housed some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.
During his first term, Mr Trump signed an executive order to keep the gates of Guantanamo open, reversing Barack Obama’s policy to close the infamous site, known for its use of torture techniques.
The efforts to wind down the number of detainees culminated last year when Mohammed struck a plea deal that would spare him and two co-defendants the risk of the death penalty.
Mohammed and co-defendants Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi agreed to plead guilty to 2,976 murder charges in exchange for life sentences.
Lloyd Austin, the defence secretary, has fought unsuccessfully since Aug 2 to throw out the plea agreement negotiated and approved by his department.
The Biden administration asked a federal appeals court on Tuesday to block the plea deal. Absent a stay from that court or some other intervention, Mohammed is due to enter his guilty plea Friday.
Family members of 9/11 victims are already at Guantanamo to watch.
But with the highest profile case on the cusp of jail and the cells of Guantanamo empty, the future of the internationally feared training camp is uncertain.
Arian Sharifi, a lecturer and chairman of the master in public policy programme at Princeton University’s School of Public and international affairs, said: “Mr Biden has been talking about shutting down Guantanamo Bay since he took office, and there are two primary reasons for this.
“First, it is largely a political move. When he withdrew US forces from Afghanistan, the narrative was that the war on terror had ended. Closing Guantanamo Bay fits into that broader goal of wrapping up everything associated with it.
“Second, closing Guantanamo Bay holds significant symbolic value for Mr Biden. Transferring detainees to Oman, less than two weeks before the end of his presidency, is part of this symbolism.
“These prisoners were not found guilty of any charges, so Biden likely saw this as a way to leave a lasting mark before exiting office.”
‘The original sin’
George W Bush’s decision to hold foreigners taken into custody overseas as part of the country’s war on terror, left the administration scrambling for somewhere to imprison and judge the hundreds it swept up.
As the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, it looked offshore, to a swath of Cuba leased by the US Navy for a century.
The first prisoners would arrive in 2002 blindfolded, shackled and wearing the distinctive orange jumpsuit.
The decision to open the prison strained US law. Dick Cheney, Mr Bush’s vice-president, called the detainees at Guantanamo “the worst of the worst” and defended creating the military commission.
The other choices were to try the men in the United States, where they would have all the rights afforded them by the US Constitution, or kill them, Mr Cheney later explained.
A 2008 Supreme Court ruling dictated US handling of the Guantanamo detainees did in fact have to abide by the US Constitution.
As the war waged on, the military response succeeded in greatly reducing the ability of al-Qaeda and later the Islamic State group to stage mass attacks abroad.
But security successes were shadowed by the human and financial tolls of those wars, by the torture of the detainees in their first years in US custody and their long imprisonment without charge.
Legal experts often call the early torture the “original sin” of Guantanamo prosecutions, clouding prospects of any trials.
Rights groups have calculated Guantanamo’s annual costs at upward of $540 million (£439 million) around $36 million per detainee at the current population of 15.
Six of the 15 remaining detainees were never charged and rights groups are pushing Mr Biden to release all of them before he leaves office.
Omar Samad, the former Afghan ambassador to Canada and France and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said: “It’s not uncommon for a US president, during their final days in office, to make decisions about Guantanamo and release a few prisoners.
“This timing is strategic – there’s typically less public and political scrutiny, and outgoing presidents like Mr Biden aren’t held accountable in the same way, as there’s no time left for significant backlash.”
Guantanamo under Trump
It’s not clear how Mr Trump would handle Guantanamo in his second term. Pete Hegseth, his pick for defence secretary, has previously called for its gates to remain open.
He has also argued that the length of the military commission proceedings makes the US look “unserious” and sends extremists the message they can “lawyer up and be just fine”.
“Trump and his team have a fundamentally different perspective on al-Qaeda, terrorism, and radical Islamists,” Mr Sharifi said.
“They are expected to adopt a much stricter stance. Trump has repeatedly stated his intention to intensify the war on terror.
“In such a scenario, not only would Guantanamo remain open, but more people could potentially be detained and sent there.”
