Taliban killer of Australian soldiers among six transferred to Qatar 

Australia said early Friday that among the six Taliban prisoners flown to Qatar from Kabul was Hekmatullah, who killed three off-duty Australian soldiers in 2012 in an insider attack. 

Australia steadfastly opposed the release of Hekmatullah as part of the prisoner release program as per the Doha agreement between the United States and Taliban in February. 

In a joint statement issued Friday morning by Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne and Linda Reynolds, Minister of Defense, the Australian government said they understand Hekmatullah will be held in detention in Qatar with five other high-risk prisoners. 

“The Government of Qatar has undertaken to the Government of Afghanistan and to the United States to keep these detainees confined and isolated,” the statement read. 

The ministers said Australia had worked hard with the United States, the Afghan government and other nations, including the British and French governments, since February this year “to keep Hekmatullah in detention, and to keep these six sensitive prisoners separate from the wider goodwill agreement.” 

“Australia is not the only country that objects to the release of this most dangerous group of prisoners. Other countries, including France, have joined calls for dangerous criminals not to be released.”

The ministers stated that they were not party to the intra-Afghan talks nor were they standing in the way of intra-Afghan negotiations and instead they fully support an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace process. 

“We recognize that there is no military solution to violence in Afghanistan. A negotiated political peace settlement is the only way to find a genuine conclusion to conflict, external militant interference, and terrorism.”

They also said they recognize and appreciate the Afghan government’s decision to move the prisoners to Qatar as in doing so it recognizes and respects the concerns of the countries that want to see justice served.