Invasion of Afghanistan prisoner escapes

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During the 2001 Invasion of Afghanistan, many Taliban, al-Qaeda and militant fighters were captured and held at military bases in the region. On several occasions, there were instances of mass escapes.

[edit] 2003

On October 11th 2003, nearly 30 prisoners held near Kandahar managed to escape. Some reporters suggested they were actually released.^[1]

[edit] 2005

In July 2005, Omar al-Faruq, the highest-ranked prisoner at the base and one of the highest-ranked al-Qaeda officers ever captured, escaped along with fellow-Kuwaiti Mahmoud Ahmad Muhammad, Saudi Muhammad Jafar Jamal al-Kahtani and Syrian Abdullah Hashimi.

All four prisoners had been individually found guilty of various acts of belligerence, and thus assigned to "Cell 119" in the days before the escape, the only cell set apart from the rest - though obstructed from guards' view.

On the night of July 15th, the prisoners were all accounted for at the 01:50 headcount, then picked the lock of the cell, changed out of their prison uniforms, sneaked into the main camp area and crawled over a damaged wall and crossed a Soviet-era minefield to meet a getaway vehicle.^[2]^[3]

After their disappearance was noted at the 03:45 headcount, a massive manhunt, including the use of helicopters, was dispatched, though didn't manage to find any of the escapees. A military police officer was initially suspected of aiding their escape, but was cleared.^[4]

Initial reports from the U.S. military gave different names for the escapees, and included a reference to Libyan Hasan Qayad, who had appeared in a video giving a sermon on the end of Ramadan 4 November 2005.^[1]

In a later interview with Newsweek, an unnamed Taliban commander suggested that the four prisoners had actually been secretly released in exchange for captured US troops.^[5] Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman spoke to the press stating that this "clearly wasn't the US military's finest hour".

On 18 October Kahtani released a videotape in Pakistan, detailing the escape and pledging further attacks against Saudi Arabia and United States.

Journalists reported on 25 September 2006 that al-Faruq had been killed by British troops operating in the Iraqi city of Basra. There were lingering reports he was a CIA informant.^[2]