Former Afghan prosecutors hunted down, killed by Taliban 3 years after US withdrawal

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The three years following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan have been a deadly game of cat and mouse for employees and allies of U.S. and NATO forces left behind under Taliban rule. Among the de facto government’s targets are thousands of Afghan prosecutors trained by U.S. personnel to enforce the rule of law and prosecute terrorists.

As the Taliban rapidly gained Afghan territory in the summer of 2021, they released convicted terrorists from government jails across the country. The Taliban had been conducting deadly attacks to target Afghan prosecutors for years before taking over Kabul on Aug. 15. The newly-released prisoners were out for revenge against the prosecutors who put them behind bars.

Joe Maida IV was a former Texas prosecutor who supported the Afghan legal system’s growth inside the country between 2006 and 2013 and worked on Afghan policy at U.S. Special Operations Command and with Special Operations and Combating Terrorism at the Pentagon through 2019. He told Fox News Digital that "The Taliban continues to hunt down individuals who supported the Afghan government." In addition to military personnel, Maida says the Taliban "are seeking out terrorism prosecutors for retribution. They're doing that by sending special teams to the provinces, but then also writing letters to the mosques to identify these individuals, who then disappear."

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