Claim: Bashar Noorzai was released in a prisoner exchange from Guantanamo Bay.
Fact: Bashar Noorzai was charged with drug trafficking in New York, after which he remained in federal custody in the United States.
Fact or Fiction?
Believed to be a close aide to Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar and a key financer of the Taliban movement, Bashar Noorzai was released on 19 September 2022 by the United States government after almost 18 years in exchange for a US national in Taliban custody, Mark Frerichs.
Many on social media rushed to announce that Noorzai was released from Guantanamo Bay, a US military prison at Guantanamo Naval Base, Cuba. Noorzai was in US federal custody after he was arrested in 2005 and charged with smuggling heroin worth more than 50 million USD. However, he was not held at Guantanamo Bay. Details of the case can be seen in the images below:
Noorzai has been given clemency by President Joe Biden in exchange for the release of Mark Frerichs. The latter was abducted by the Haqqani Network affiliated with the Afghan Taliban in 2020 from Khost province in Afghanistan – a month before a peace agreement was signed between the US and the Taliban in Qatar. The White House also issued a statement in this regard.
Virality
Searching the three keywords Bashar Noorzai and Guantanamo show 1,307 interactions with posts shared here and here, but a search for the Urdu/Arabic/Persian term بشر گوانتانامو showed 24, 452 interactions across 34 posts. This post had the most interactions with 13,000 likes and 177 comments while this is the oldest post found.
Other than direct posts, links to news websites have been shared across Facebook, Twitter and other platforms with false information, Al Jazeera ran a disclaimer after making corrections in their story here.
Conclusion: Haji Bashar Noorzai was indicted in 2005 over drug trafficking charges and kept in US federal custody. The news of him being imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay is false.