Hajji Bashir Noorzai, an Afghan drug lord and early supporter of the Taliban movement was handed over by the United States in exchange for American civil engineer Mark Frerichs, a senior Biden administration official told Reuters on Monday.

The exchange took place at Kabul Airport. 

Frerichs had been captured by the Taliban in 2020 while working for the “benefit of the Afghan people” according to a Business Insider report. Noorzai on the other hand was arrested in 2005 and convicted in 2008 for his attempt to smuggle cocaine worth $50 million into the United States, the Department of Justice had announced at the time. 

Noorzai was granted clemency by the Biden administration after 17 years in US custody, according to the Reuters report. 

Who is Hajji Bashir Noorzai?

Not much about Hajji Bashir Noorzai’s early life is known. What is known is that during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was a part of the resistance fighters from 1979 to 1989. 

Some time after the 9/11 attacks in the US, Noorzai was given control of city of Kandahar in Afghanistan when the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar Mujahid went into hiding. At the time, Noorzai would supply the Taliban with weapons, explosives as well as militia. 

In November 2001, he met with a team of US Special Forces and intelligence officers who detained and questioned him over six days about the movements of the Taliban and their operations. He willing became an agent for the US to which he handed over 15 truckloads of weapons which included 400 anti-aircraft missiles which had been hidden by the Taliban in his tribe’s territory. 

Noorzai was arrested by American authorities 10 days after reaching New York City where he had come to be debriefed by his handlers. He had been promised that he wouldn’t be arrested.

He was convicted in 2008 and was serving a life sentence. However, since the Taliban took over Afghanistan last year, the terror organisation demanded that he be freed in exchange for Frerichs, whom they had captured in 2020.