Taliban Hands Over Mahmood Habibi To Al-Qaeda For Execution, Says Ex-CIA Agent

Sarah Adams, a former CIA agent, has claimed that the Taliban handed over Afghan-American citizen Mahmood Shah Habibi to Al-Qaeda. Adams warned that "Habibi is now awaiting execution”.

On Saturday, Adams warned on social media platform X that if the United States does not take necessary action immediately, "an American will be executed by al-Qaeda”.

"This will happen while our government is turning a blind eye," he added.

Mahmood Shah Habibi was arrested in August 2022 along with 29 other employees of Asia Consultancy Group. Habibi was the head of the former Afghan government's Civil Aviation Authority when he was arrested a day after the former al-Qaeda leader was killed in Sherpur, Kabul.

The Taliban have accused the company of helping the US government target Ayman al-Zawahiri. However, the group has not yet confirmed Habibi's arrest.

Earlier, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that he had discussed the prisoner exchange with US representatives.

Mujahid announced the release of Mohajer-ul-Afghani, a Taliban prisoner in Guantanamo, as one of the conditions for the release of detained US citizens from the group's prisons.

Two years after Mahmood Shah Habibi, an Afghan-born American citizen, was detained by the Taliban, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation announced last month that it had no information about him.

Now, the former CIA agent says that the Taliban "lied" to the US government about Habibi's arrest and his support for al-Qaeda.

Criticising the US cooperation with the Taliban in the fight against terrorism, Sarah Adams said, "Our government also considers the Taliban to be a counter-terrorism ally in Afghanistan."

In September this year, the deputy director of the US Central Intelligence Agency said the CIA had maintained contact with the Taliban in various ways over the past three years. "We have been in contact with them [the Taliban] in various ways all this time, as they have made efforts to fight al-Qaeda and ISIS-K," he added.

David Cohen also claimed that "terrible predictions" about Afghanistan becoming a platform for terrorist attacks around the world have been "wrong”.