A Taliban official said Monday in a news conference at the Afghan presidential palace that he had been held for eight years by the US at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre before he was released under former President George W. Bush.
Gholam Ruhani was among 13 Afghan prisoners released in December 2007. A military review panel had recommended he be transferred out of U.S. custody after concluded he posed a 'medium' risk to the US and its allies. He was one of 485 prisoners sent back to their home countries from Guantanamo under the Bush administration.
Ruhani, who was among the first prisoners brought to what was then a makeshift prison on the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2002, had admitted to the military panel that he had been a member of the Taliban and spent four years in their intelligence service in Kabul.
Now about 46, Ruhani grew up in the Ghazni area and fled the country for Iran during the Afghan-Soviet war, returning to the country in 1992. He told the US military that he was conscripted by the Taliban in 1996 after working in his family's store. He also admitted that his brother-in-law was the chief of intelligence for the Taliban.
