Taliban prisoners exploit release loophole with fake medical claims

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The Taliban in Afghanistan once dug underground tunnels and staged suicide bombings to spring their members from jail, all to get their forces back in action against U.S. and the Afghan government.

But these days, the group can simply exploit loopholes reserved for the old and sick: bribing and intimidating health officials for early release.

“We screen sick prisoners being treated inside prison hospitals or who have needed to get their treatment in national hospitals outside the prison,” Mohammad Nowroz Haqmal, 41, a prominent representative for the Ministry of Public Health to the International Security Assistance Forces and regular on Afghan television news, told Fox News. “And ones that are categorized as having untreatable conditions like cancer, are released regardless of their level of crime.”

But Haqmal said internal corruption has more and more led to staff accepting bribes from prisoners and Taliban associates – particularly from those involved in Afghanistan’s widespread drug trade – for select inmates to be transferred to hospitals outside the prison where they can more easily escape. Others secure their outright release, under the false pretense of being terminally ill.

According to Haqmal, this all points to a much larger issue of how Taliban insurgents are returning to the battlefield. He argues that since 2014, when he first became manager of prison health screenings, hundreds of Taliban members were released under the “terminally ill” or old and ailing guise. And he anticipates more than 80 percent of those soldiers returned to the battlefield.

One U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they don’t have any clear way of identifying the number of Taliban released under false medical pretenses. – READ MORE

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