Taliban say US has lifted $10m reward for information on Sirajuddin Haqqani

The United States has lifted a $10 million reward offer for information leading to the arrest of a major Taliban leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, an Afghan interior ministry spokesperson said on Saturday, Reuters reported.

The US State Department did not immediately respond to request for comment. The FBI still lists the reward on its website, saying Haqqani was “believed to have coordinated and participated in cross-border attacks against United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan”.

This development comes after the Taliban on Thursday freed an American citizen detained in Afghanistan for over two years following direct talks between US hostage envoy Adam Boehler and Taliban officials in Kabul, a source briefed on the release had said.

George Glezmann, a mechanic for Delta Airlines in Atlanta, was detained in 2022 while visiting Kabul as a tourist, left Afghanistan aboard a Qatari aircraft on Thursday evening bound for Qatar, the source said.

In December last year, the Afghan Taliban’s acting minister for refugees, Khalil Rahman Haqqani, and six other people were killed in an explosion in the capital Kabul. He was also the uncle of Sirajuddin, who is the current interior minister in the Taliban government in Kabul.

Sirajuddin was among the first senior leaders who entered Kabul in August 2021 but kept a low profile over the next few months. He would meet foreign dignitaries and Taliban officials but photographs from such meetings would always be blurred. He once appeared on a television interview but his face was not shown. He eventually made his first public appearance in March 2022.

Haqqani heads his own group called the Haqqani network, which has been designated a terror outfit by the US for carrying out several major attacks on foreign and Afghan forces during the 20-year-long war in Afghanistan. However, the Taliban insist that there is no separate faction within the group.

Haqqani was wanted by America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation for questioning, with the US offering a reward of $10 million for information leading to his arrest.

He is the son of Mujahideen leader Jalauddin Haqqani, who fought against the erstwhile Soviet Union in the 1980s. The senior Haqqani later joined the Taliban and served as minister in the previous Taliban government.