President Joe Biden’s administration has yet to confirm the identity of the suicide bomber who killed 13 U.S. service members in an attack on the Kabul airport in Afghanistan on Aug. 26, 2021. The Islamic State terrorist group has already named the bomber and he is suspected of having been a detainee at Bagram Airbase, which the Biden administration abandoned weeks before the fall of the U.S.-backed Afghan government.
The Washington Examiner reported Thursday that it asked the Biden administration for confirmation of the Kabul airport bomber’s identity, but administration officials did not provide it.
The U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price referred the Examiner’s questions about the bomber’s identity to the Pentagon. Army Maj. Rob Lodewick, a Pentagon spokesman, then responded saying the military “has not confirmed this. I’d have to refer you to the FBI’s investigation on the matter.”
The CIA also declined to comment as did the White House National Security Council.
Shortly after the attack, the Islamic State’s Amaq News Agency identified the bomber as Abdul Rahman al Logari. Other western media outlets have reported on al Logari and even directly described him as the Kabul bomber. According to the Washington Examiner, al Logari’s responsibility for the Kabul attack is “something of an open secret” throughout Congress.
Despite being identified as the bomber by ISIS itself, the Biden administration still will not say for certain that al Logari is indeed the bomber who killed 11 U.S. Marines, a U.S. Navy hospitalman, and an Army Soldier and wounded 18 other U.S. troops.
Al Logari is thought to have been among the thousands of detainees the U.S. left in the hands of the now-defunct U.S.-backed Afghan government when it handed over control of Bagram Airbase on July 2, 2021. In addition to serving as a major airfield, Bagram Airbase also hosted the Parwan Detention Facility.
The U.S. departure from Bagram apparently caught Afghan leaders by surprise.
“We (heard) some rumor that the Americans had left Bagram … and finally by seven o’clock in the morning, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram,” Gen. Mir Asadullah Kohistani told the Associated Press in a July 6, 2021 article.
The Taliban seized control of Bagram Airbase on Aug. 15, 2021 as the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed.
In September 2021, Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) said, “U.S. national security officials have now confirmed to me the reports that the August 26th Kabul bomber was a known ISIS-K terrorist that was previously detained at the Bagram prison and was released along with thousands of others just days before the deadly attack.”
Calvert recently told the Washington Examiner, “We’ve received no explanation for the strategic decision to abandon Bagram Air Base or the failure to secure the thousands of terrorists and Taliban fighters secured there. The Biden administration refuses to officially name the bomber despite unofficial confirmation by sources of his name, affiliation with ISIS-K, and that he was among those who escaped from Bagram.”
Calvert went further in his remarks to the Washington Examiner, asking, “Is the Biden administration refusing to confirm the bomber’s identity because it would draw direct connection between Biden’s policy decisions and the deaths of 13 American service members?”