Mullah Abdul Rauf
- former Taliban commander and Gitmo detainee turned ISIS recruiter, was killed Monday in a drone strike, officials said.
He was a Taliban commander captured by the United States and held
at Guantanamo Bay. But he was let go and returned to Afghanistan. Mullah Abdul
Rauf went on to become a recruiter for ISIS in Afghanistan.
He was killed in a drone strike Monday, two officials told CNN.
Rauf and five others were killed, four of them Pakistani
militants, said Mohammed Jan Rasoulya, the deputy governor of southern Helmand
province. A senior Afghan security source confirmed Rauf's death.
The Washington Post, in a headline last month, called him
"the shadowy figure recruiting for the Islamic State in Afghanistan."
The New York Times called him the "militant commander at the
center of the concerns in Helmand Province" but said some local Taliban
figures "dismiss claims" that he had established "a significant
new Islamic State cell in Helmand Province."
He was known to many with the name "Khadim" tacked on to
the end of his name.
"Until 9/11, the hard-nosed Khadim commanded (Taliban
creator) Mullah Omar's elite mobile reserve force, fighting regime opponents
all over Afghanistan," Newsweek wrote of Rauf in a 2011 list of list of
most-wanted insurgents. "Arrested and sent to Guantanamo soon after the
Taliban's collapse, he was released in late 2007, having convinced his jailers
that he wanted only to go home and tend his farm. Escaping from house arrest in
Kabul, he fled to Pakistan."
Although the United States does not publicize the names of
detainees at Guantanamo, a document posted by WikiLeaks showed that the United
States recommended Rauf be "transferred to the control of another country
for continued detention" as early as 2004.
In a 2011 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations -- part of the Armed Services Committee -- a lawmaker asked
about Rauf and another former detainee.
Ed Mornston, director of the Joint Intelligence Task Force of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, responded that "there have been instances
where detainees who have been transferred from Gitmo have reengaged and have
been in the fight and have impacted the lives of U.S. service members. We do
track that. I can't discuss that much further in this open session, but we do
in fact know that that has happened."
CNN
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