The Slatest

Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner Reportedly Arrested by Taliban for Leading ISIS Faction

Guantánamo Bay.

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In a kind of nightmare terrorism Mad Lib, Gawker has picked up a story out of Afghanistan asserting that Mullah Abdul Rauf Khadim, a former Taliban soldier released from American custody at Guantánamo Bay in 2007, has been arrested by the Taliban for working on behalf of ISIS.

[Rauf] recently joined the IS, a jihadi group which controls large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria, and has been leading hundreds of masked gunmen in northern districts of Helmand.

A Taliban commander in Helmand, wishing anonymity, told Pajhwok Afghan News they disarmed Rauf and his 45 gunmen and detained them on Wednesday in compliance with directives from the Taliban’s governor for Helmand, Mullah Abdul Rahim Akhund.

Gawker has more on the context of Rauf’s arrest—ISIS, reportedly, is attempting on more than one front to undermine the Taliban in order to consolidate its position as the “future of Islamic governance.”