The suspect had been recruited to Unit 03 of the Kandahar Strike Force, a former military commander told the BBC, coming to the US after the withdrawal.

The Afghan man accused of shooting two members of the US military in downtown Washington DC once worked alongside the CIA in Afghanistan, officials have said.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal drove thousands of miles from the west coast to launch an “ambush-style” attack on two West Virginia members of the National Guard on Wednesday afternoon, authorities said.

He shot Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and Andrew Wolfe, 24, at close range just a few blocks from the White House, officials said, and they both remain in a critical condition in hospital.

Mr Lakanwal came to the US in 2021 under a programme that offered special immigration protections to Afghans in the wake of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

He helped guard US forces at Kabul airport as thousands scrambled to escape Afghanistan before the Taliban took power, a former military commander who served alongside him told the BBC.

The father of five had been recruited to Unit 03 of the Kandahar Strike Force, nine years earlier.

His unit was known locally as Scorpion Forces, operating initially under the CIA but eventually for the Afghan intelligence department known as the National Directorate of Security.

Mr Lakanwal was a GPS tracker specialist, the former commander told the BBC, describing him as a “sporty and jolly character”.

His whole unit was moved from Kandahar to Kabul five days before the Taliban entered the capital. They continued to protect the airport for another six days, before they too were airlifted out to the US.

At a press conference on Thursday, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed Mr Lakanwal’s connection to US forces, saying the suspect “had a relationship in Afghanistan with partner forces”, before moving to the US.

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
    43·
    2 days ago

    How odd. Some people might even wonder if that’s almost too much of a coincidence, but the CIA director (chosen by executive nomination btw) has cleared that up for us, so I won’t make any wild speculations fueled by conspiracy theories.

    “The Biden Administration justified bringing the alleged shooter to the United States in September 2021 due to his prior work with the US Government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said in a statement to CBS.

    Since Trump took office on January 20th, Ratcliffe has been very quick to get ahead of any wild conspiracy theories before the narrative could spin out of control.

    The CIA on Saturday offered a new assessment on the origin of the Covid outbreak, saying the coronavirus is “more likely” to have leaked from a Chinese lab than to have come from animals.But the intelligence agency cautioned it had “low confidence” in this determination. A spokesperson said that a “research-related origin” of the pandemic “is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting”. The decision to release that assessment marks one of the first made by the CIA’s new director John Ratcliffe, appointed by Donald Trump, who took over the agency on Thursday. Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence during President Trump’s first term, has long favoured the lab leak theory, claiming Covid most likely came from a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.