by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – The ISIS-K suicide bomber who killed 13 US service members and 170 Afghan civilians at Kabul airport on August 26 had been released from prison at the Bagram Air Base just days before the attack, Yahoo News reports. The bombing took place as the US conducted an intensely chaotic albeit massive evacuation effort as part of its final withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Identified by ISIS-K as Abdul Rehman Al-Loghri, the suicide bomber had been jailed at the Bagram Air Base, formerly a major operational base for the US and its allies, Yahoo News said. The US turned Bagram Base over to the Afghan government in July, but the Parwan prison there had been under Afghan control since 2013.
When the Afghan government collapsed as the Taliban swept to power on August 15, the prison immediately came under the control of the new Islamic regime. The Taliban released thousands of prisoners, including the Kabul airport terrorist.
At the time the US turned the Bagram base over to the Afghan government in July, there were around 5,000 prisoners held there, the vast majority being terrorists, the Afghan Ministry of Defense told CNN.
Defending the US withdrawal from the Bagram Base at Capitol hearing last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in his opening statement:
"Retaining Bagram would have required putting as many as five thousand U.S. troops in harm's way, just to operate and defend it … Staying at Bagram — even for counter-terrorism purposes — meant staying at war in Afghanistan, something that the President made clear that he would not do."
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