The ISIS-K suicide bomber who killed 13 US service members outside Kabul airport in August had just been released from prison by the Taliban before the attack, according to a new report.
Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri was among those let out of the Afghan-controlled prison at Bagram Air Base on Aug. 15 after the Taliban seized control of the region, officials told CNN on Wednesday.
California Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who confirmed the details with national security officials last week, said the ISIS-K bomber had been imprisoned at Bagram for four years after being arrested over a New Delhi bombing plot.
The Taliban started releasing its own members, ISIS-K followers and thousands of others from the prison after the US abandoned the Bagram airbase amid the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Afghan authorities had been in control of the prison, located on the airbase, since 2013.
Officials estimate there were hundreds of ISIS-K members being housed in the prison when the Taliban seized control of it.
The suicide bomber detonated a bomb outside the Abbey gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport on Aug. 26 — 11 days after being released by the Taliban.
The attack killed 13 US service members and at least 169 Afghans trying to get on evacuation flights out of Kabul.
Calvert has blamed the Biden administration’s “poor judgment and execution of our troop withdrawal” for allowing the suicide bomber and other terrorists to be released from the prison in the lead up to the attack.
“The Biden Administration needs to explain why these prisoners were not transferred and secured at another location,” he said in a statement.
“Those responsible for these grave errors not only put our brave service members in harm’s way but have now – by our military’s own admission – placed Americans in greater danger than they were before.”
A number of service members injured in the attack are still undergoing treatment in the US.
