Members of a Marine sniper team who thought they could take out the suicide bomber before the catastrophic attack at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport in the final days of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan were wrong, determined a study ordered by the American Central Command. .
“Over the past two years, some military personnel have claimed that they had the bomber in sight and could have prevented the attack. We now know that is not accurate,” said a member of the additional review team, tasked with building on the military’s initial investigation by taking into account the most recent information and claims that have surfaced, told reporters at a recent press briefing.
In another significant revelation, team members identified Abdul Rahman al-Logari as the terrorist responsible for the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and some 170 Afghans when, on August 26, 2021, he detonated a loaded suicide vest of 20 pounds of military-grade explosives near the airport’s Abbey Gate. The explosion sent a mass of 5-millimeter ball bearings tearing through the dense crowd. This is the first time that US authorities have confirmed that al-Logari was the perpetrator of the attack.
Al-Logari was a member of the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, group since 2016, according to a member of the army review team.
At one point held by coalition forces, al-Logari was one of several prisoners indiscriminately released by the Taliban as their fighters attempted to take control of the country from Afghan security forces – for mostly without a fight – in the days leading up to the attack. » said a second team member.
Alicia Lopez, mother of Marine Corps Cpl. Abbey Gate Gold Star family member Hunter Lopez touches his son’s photo after a House Foreign Affairs Committee roundtable discussion on Capitol Hill August 29, 2023 in Washington.
Alex Brandon/AP
ISIS-K took credit for the carnage at Abbey Gate shortly after the attack, claiming that al-Logari was behind the atrocity.
U.S. intelligence compared a photo of the suspected suicide bomber released by ISIS-K and photos of al-Logari taken while he was in coalition custody, using facial analysis to determine they were the same person , according to one of the officials. The U.S. intelligence community then verified that al-Logari was indeed the suicide bomber, according to the first member of the review team.
Even if the bomber had not been freed by the Taliban, ISIS-K could still have carried out the attack, the second official said.
“They had several bombers,” the official said. “And this supports the conclusion that the Abbey Gate attack was not tactically preventable.”
GOP congressmen have repeatedly raised the possibility that the bombing could have been avoided in their attacks on the Biden administration’s handling of the withdrawal, largely based on testimony from former Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a member of one of the sniper teams keeping watch near Abbey Gate.
At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in March 2023, Vargas-Andrews claimed that his team had spotted a suspicious man matching the description they were given of the suspected Abbey Gate bomber, but was denied permission to fire and prevent the explosion, which cost the lives of two of its members. own members.
The top U.S. general in the Middle East during the withdrawal, Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, now retired, told lawmakers on the same committee last month that he was unaware of intelligence alerts given to U.S. forces at the time that matched the description of the man spotted by the sniper team.
Florida Republican Rep. Cory Mills accused McKenzie of questioning the Marine’s integrity, asking, “Will you face him and say that before him now?”
“I don’t want to face him and tell him that. I mean the battlefield is a very complex place. There were many threats floating around that day. I honor his service. I regret that he was injured ” replied McKenzie.
An Afghan hands over his child to a British paratrooper assigned to the 2nd Battalion Parachute Regiment while a member of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division provides security at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 26 2021.
US Army via AP, FILE
The additional review team also found that the man spotted by the sniper teams did not match the descriptions given by intelligence reports, adding that no specific individual had been identified as the suicide bomber by the intelligence services before the attack. Examiners concluded that the Marines erroneously departed from a description that confused certain elements of an intelligence report on one man with elements of an informal “spot report” describing another suspicious individual seen by others troops near the airport perimeter.
They and other military personnel focused on a “bald man in black” who did not precisely match any actual alert reports at the time, according to the study. Even authentic description reports of suspicious individuals were often vague enough that they could match any number of people in the crowd, the study found.
Additionally, the review team compared a photo taken by the sniper team of the man they believed could be the bomber with photos of al-Logari, and determined with a great certainty that it was not the same person.
The army’s first review official said al-Logari did not linger in the crowd, but detonated his vest immediately after arriving at Abbey Gate. It is therefore very unlikely that even trained observers from Marine sniper teams could have spotted him in time among the mass, especially since there was no description of the terrorist before the attack, according to the manager.
“I must reiterate that the military was vigilant in carrying out its duties,” the official said. “Yet available intelligence lacked data that could be targeted to enable positive identification of the bomber prior to the attack. The suspect identified by a sniper team was not the Abbey Gate bomber.”
The Army plans to release a redacted version of the full 1,200-page supplemental report to the public at an unspecified date, an Army official said.
ABC News
