The former governor of an Afghanistan province has gone before a U.S. military panel to determine whether he should remain held as an enemy combatant, a Pentagon official said Tuesday. A 37-year-old who was the governor of western Herat province from 1999 to 2001 appeared before the panel Monday, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Daryl Borgquist, a spokesman for the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The military does not identify individual prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. However, the governor of Herat from 1999 until the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 was Khairullah Khaikhwa. He was arrested in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border in 2002. Borgquist said the prisoner who appeared Monday had been at Guantanamo for about two years. Borgquist said the prisoner had control over police and military operations in Herat, including the Taliban's two largest military divisions, which apparently made him an enemy combatant. No media members attended his hearing, and details of his testimony were not released.
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