Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost | |
|---|---|
| Native name | عبد الرحیم مسلم دوست |
| Born | 1960 (age 64–65)[1] Jalalabad, Afghanistan |
| Allegiance |  Ikhwan (1979–1980) JDQS (1986–1990s) Taliban (1990s–2014)  ISIS–K (2014–late 2015) ISIS (late 2015–present)[2] |
| Service number | 561 (Internment Serial Number) |
| Battles / wars | |
Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost (Urdu: عبد الرحیم مسلم دوست; born 1960) is an Afghan Salafi jihadist militant who served primarily with the Taliban, and later, as a founding member of ISIS–K.[3] Dost's militancy began by age 19, when he left Afghanistan to join the Ikhwan, carrying out the Grand Mosque seizure in Mecca, Saudi Arabia before most of the group were captured and executed, though Dost escaped to Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. By 1986, he had returned to Afghanistan to fight in the Soviet–Afghan War as a member of Jamaat al-Dawah ila al-Quran wal-Sunnah, a Salafist forerunner to the Taliban. Following the Soviet withdrawal, he joined the Taliban as they ascended to power in the 1990s.
During the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Dost was arrested and held in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he was noted for his poetic writings.[4] In April 2005, he was released following a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, and returned to Peshawar, but was quickly recaptured by the Pakistani ISI, before ultimately being released in a prisoner exchange between Pakistani government and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) in 2008.
From his release from Pakistani custody through 2014, he was active with the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, until swearing allegiance to the Islamic State's Khorasan Province in 2014. In late 2015 he purportedly left ISIS–K and the life of militancy, publicly condemning the group's emir, Hafiz Saeed Khan, as "illiterate" for approving attacks on civilians, however he reportedly maintains his allegiance to the Islamic State and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.[2][5]
- ^ "JTF- GTMO Detainee Assessment" (PDF). Department of Defense. 21 January 2008. Retrieved 8 April 2023.
- ^ a b "Ex-Gitmo 'poet' and committed jihadist denounces Islamic State for attacks on civilians". 20 July 2016. Retrieved 9 August 2016.
- ^ Sketches of Guantanamo Detainees-Part I Archived 2007-03-28 at the Wayback Machine, WTOP, March 15, 2006
- ^ OARDEC (May 15, 2006). "List of Individuals Detained by the Department of Defense at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 through May 15, 2006" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 2007-09-29.
- ^ "Islamic State chief for Khorasan loses key support". The Express Tribune. 19 October 2015. Retrieved 21 July 2016.