Ghairat Baheer | |
---|---|
Born | 1956 (age 67–68) Chanakhwa, Paktika |
Arrested | 2002 Islamabad, Pakistan |
Citizenship | Afghanistan |
Detained at | the salt pit, BTIF |
Alleged to be a member of | Hezbi Islami Gulbuddin |
Status | released |
Occupation | Senator in the House of Elders - Afghanistan |
Ghairat Baheer is a citizen of Afghanistan who served as a Senator in the House of Elders of Afghanistan. [1] He is also the Chairman of the Political Committee of Hezbi Islami in Afghanistan. Ghairat Baheer was held by American forces in extrajudicial detention for over six years. [2] The BBC News reported Pakistani officials took him into custody during a pre-dawn raid on his home in Islamabad on October 30, 2002. [3] The BBC said no reason was offered for his apprehension, and that there were rumors US security officials participated in the raid.
After his release in May 2008 Baheer asserted he had spent six months in the salt pit, one of the Central Intelligence Agency's network of clandestine interrogation centers. [4] [5] [6] [7] He spent the rest of his detention in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility in Afghanistan.
According to the Associated Press Baheer is a medical doctor, a son-in-law of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the leader of the Hezbi Islami Gulbuddin previously a militant group, and that he was captured with Gul Rahman, the only captive the CIA has acknowledged died in captivity. [4] In 2010 Baheer was a member of the Hezbi Islami Gulbuddin peace delegation to peace talks.
In an interview with the German news agency DPA Bahir said he spent most of his six years in captivity in chains, bombarded with disorienting music so loud his guards wore hearing protection. [7] He said they were fed an inadequate quantity of food, and he lost 40 kilograms, and he still hadn't fully recovered his strength.
In 2012 he served as the HiG's main negotiator with the United States. [8] [9] [10]
David Loyn, of the BBC News , quoting sources close to new President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani, reported that Ghairat Baheer had been offered a position in his new cabinet. [11] Baheer, former Taliban Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, and former Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salem Zaeef, were offered the Ministries of Minister of Rural Affairs, Minister of Border Affairs and Minister of Religious Affairs.
On June 14, 2018, Baheer addressed 180 members of the Hezbi Islami Party, who had just been released from prison, following the peace negotiations he had helped lead. [12] He urged the men, on behalf of the party, to be peaceful, law-abiding citizens.
Ghairat Baheer was sworn in as a Senator and a member of the House of Elders on September 16, 2018. [1] He was selected for the senate as part of the one third members that the President is entitled to appoint. He is also currently the Chairman of the Political Committee of Hezbi Islami in Afghanistan.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is an Afghan politician, and former mujahideen leader and drug trafficker. He is the founder and current leader of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin political party, so called after Mohammad Yunus Khalis split from Hezbi Islami in 1979 to found Hezb-i Islami Khalis. He twice served as Prime Minister during the 1990s.
This article on the history of Afghanistan covers the period from the fall of the Najibullah government in 1992 to the end of the international military presence in Afghanistan.
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Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil Abdul Ghaffar is an Afghan politician who has been a member of the militant Taliban organization. He was the Taliban foreign minister from 27 October 1999 in their first Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan rule, until the Taliban were deposed in late 2001. Prior to this, he served as spokesman and secretary to Mullah Mohammed Omar, leader of the Taliban. After the Northern Alliance, accompanied by U.S. and British forces, ousted the regime, Muttawakil surrendered in Kandahar to government troops.
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The Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, also referred to as Hezb-e-Islami or Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), is an Afghan political party and paramilitary organization, originally founded in 1976 as Hezb-e-Islami and led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 1979, Mulavi Younas Khalis split with Hekmatyar and established his own group, which became known as Hezb-i Islami Khalis; the remaining part of Hezb-e Islami, still headed by Hekmatyar, became known as Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin. Hezbi Islami seeks to emulate the Muslim Brotherhood and to replace the various tribal factions of Afghanistan with one unified Islamic state. This puts them at odds with the more tribe-oriented Taliban.
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The 1992–1996 Afghan Civil War, also known as the Second Afghan Civil War, took place between 28 April 1992—the date a new interim Afghan government was supposed to replace the Republic of Afghanistan of President Mohammad Najibullah—and the Taliban's occupation of Kabul establishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996.
Hajji Din Mohammad also known as Azizullah Din Mohammad is a politician in Afghanistan who served as the Governor of Nangarhar Province followed by Governor of Kabul Province. He is currently the Chairman of Peace and Development Islamic Party. He has been involved in the peace and reconciliation process between the Afghan Government and the Taliban and is currently the deputy of High Council for National Reconciliation. Haji Din Mohammad comes from a distinguished Pashtun family "Arsala" The Arsala family is part of the Jabar Khel. He is also the elder brother of late Hajji Abdul Qadir and Abdul Haq. His great-grandfather, Wazir Arsala Khan, served as Foreign Minister of Afghanistan in 1869. One of Arsala Khan's descendants, Taj Mohammad Khan, was a general at the Battle of Maiwand. Another descendant, Abdul Jabbar Khan, was Afghanistan’s first Ambassador to Russia.
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Dr. Ghairat Baheer, Dr. Bakhtar Aminzai and Amanullah Azimi were introduced to the upper house by President Ashraf Ghani.
A former detainee who knew the Canadian-Egyptian inside Bagram, Ghairat Baheer, said Ismail's Western attitudes and habits irritated other Muslim detainees. Baheer, who spent four years in the detention facility, said Ismail told him he was "not captured as a fighter or a warrior" and was travelling in Afghanistan at the time.
Ghairat Baheer was taken from his house in Islamabad early on Tuesday, an unnamed Pakistani police officer told the Reuters news agency. It is not clear exactly why he has been detained.
Baheer, who said he spent six months in the Salt Pit during six years in Afghan prisons, said in an interview in Islamabad that he never learned what happened to Rahman. Rahman's family repeatedly pressed International Red Cross officials about his fate, Baheer said. "If he died there in interrogation or he died a natural death they should have told his family and ended their uncertainty," Baheer said.
Rahman was captured about three weeks before his death in a raid in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad against Hezb-e-Islami, an Afghan insurgent group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which was believed to have ties to al-Qaida. Rahman was arrested along with Hekmatyar's son-in-law, Dr. Ghairat Baheer.
Ghairat Baheer, also son-in-law of Hekmatyar, was kept in detention by Pakistan for two years and was later handed over to the Afghan authorities, Hizb-e-Islami sources said.
Mr Baheer said that he met CIA chief Gen (retired) David Petraeus, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Nato Commander John R. Allen on recent visit to Kabul and discussed with them the situation in war-torn Afghanistan.
Terming their recently concluded five-day visit to Afghanistan successful, chairman of the political committee of the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA), Dr Ghairat Baheer Wednesday said they would never make any deal on the Islamic identity, independence and national integrity of Afghanistan.
A Taliban delegation led by former Afghan consul-general in Peshawar, Maulvi Najibullah, and a three-member Hizb-e-Islami delegation led by Dr Ghairat Baheer, in charge of political affairs of Hizb-e-Islami, recently visited Saudi Arabia to hold informal talks with kingdom officials, diplomats familiar with the talks said, requesting anonymity.
The three men whom President Ghani had hoped to draw into his government were Mullah Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, who has lived relatively openly in Kabul for some years, Wakil Muttawakil, the former Taliban foreign minister, and Ghairat Baheer, a close relative of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose forces are allied to the Taliban.
"Hizb-e-Islami leadership expects that you (released inmates) become patriotic citizens for this country," said Ghairat Baheer, head of Hizb-e-Islami-Government Peace Accord Commission.