Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari has criticized former prime minister and PTI Chairman Imran Khan for taking credit for the release of two Pakistani brothers from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay saying that a selective premier can’t do such things, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.
She hailed the courage and charisma of her brother, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari who is capable of doing things which ‘others’ could not do for years.
In her tweet, posted on Saturday, Bakhtawar wrote: “Unfortunate you could not do it in your years of selection but thankfully #Pakistan #ForeignMinister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari capable of doing what others couldn’t do for years (FO press release already released yesterday).”
According to a press release of foreign office on Friday, Muhammad Ahmad Rabbani and Abdul Rahim Ghulam Rabbani, two Pakistani nationals who were in detention in Guantanamo Bay detention facility, were released and repatriated to Pakistan on 24 February 2023.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs coordinated an extensive inter-agency process to facilitate repatriation of Muhammad Ahmad Rabbani and Abdul Rahim Ghulam Rabbani.
Both the Pakistani brothers were freed after more than 20 years in US detention.
Abdul Rabbani, who was born in 1967, is believed to have been one of the oldest inmates at the facility on a US base in Cuba.
US officials accused him of working for avowed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and operating an Al-Qaeda safe house in Karachi, but his detainee assessment indicates he was not believed to have had "specific insight into Al-Qaeda operational plans."
Mohammed Rabbani, born in 1969, was accused of recruiting his older brother into extremist circles. He is believed to have organized travel and funds for KSM and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole missile destroyer, which left 17 US sailors dead.
The pair were arrested in Karachi in September 2002 by Pakistani authorities, according to a Senate intelligence committee report that also names Mohammed Rabbani as one of 17 detainees subjected to torture at overseas CIA secret prisons, known as black sites.
Both men arrived at Guantanamo Bay in 2004 and were approved for release in 2021, the Defense Department said in a statement.
Their release brings to 32 the number of detainees left at Guantanamo Bay. Of those, 18 are eligible for transfer, three are eligible for review, nine are on trial in US military commissions and two have been convicted.