Report: Karzai Set Taliban Leader Free

A professional kidnapper and Taliban commander was released from an Afghan prison 10 years early and may have won a hush-hush pardon from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the BBC reports. Karzai’s people say the president “could not recall the matter.”

BBC:

Akbar Agha was sentenced to 16 years in prison for kidnapping three UN workers in the Afghan capital in 2004. He was released from prison late last year.

His friends told the BBC he had been pardoned by President Hamid Karzai. But a spokesman said the president “could not recall the matter”.

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DoD / Cherie Cullen