Afghan interpreter who helped rescue Biden: ‘If they find me, they will kill me’
An Afghan interpreter who helped President Biden when he was a U.S. senator on a visit to Afghanistan again pleaded for help from the White House, saying if the Taliban find him “they will kill me.”
Appearing on “Fox & Friends” via telephone, the interpreter going by the name Mohammed acknowledged feeling betrayed by the U.S. evacuation operation.
“They left me and my family and like me, the other people left behind. But it’s very scary, man, as we are under great risk,” he said.
In 2008, Mohammed was part of a team sent out from Bagram Air Base to extract then-Sens. Biden (D-Del.), John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) after the Black Hawk helicopters they were on were forced to make emergency landings due to a blizzard 20 miles outside of Bagram.
Host Jillian Mele asked Mohammed, who is currently in hiding, what would happen to him and his family if the Taliban were to find him.
“If they find me, they will kill me,” Mohammed said. “It’s too easy. There are many as answer for them, but if they find me, attack me, or, for example, by my phone number as — or any kind of information, we will be killed. That’s too easy for them.”
“I can’t escape from my house. But all voters in my country are — but only I and my son have passport. The rest of the family here do not have. Only we have national ID with ourself. It’s very hard to process from voters and to go to another countries like, I cannot mention their names,” Mohammed added.
When asked what he would say to Biden, Mohammed said, “Do not forget me and my family. At the moment in Afghanistan, it is very hard and horrifying situation. All — and all those — and all voters in my country are zealot. But there’s no escape from here to another area.”
Despite the situation he is in, Mohammed told Mele that he does not regret aiding U.S. forces.
Mohammed spoke with The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, asking Biden to “save me and my family.”
According to Mohammed, his application for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) had gotten stalled by bureaucratic processes, preventing him from leaving Afghanistan at an earlier point. When Kabul fell, he and his family attempted to reach the airport, but U.S. forces told him that only he could go pass the checkpoint.
When asked about Mohammed’s case on Tuesday, White House chief of staff Ron Klain said the administration would “cut through the red tape,” find Mohammed and get him out of Afghanistan.
“I read in that story that he did not finish the SIV process because of some complexity with his employer — it doesn’t matter. We’re gonna cut through the red tape, we’re gonna find this gentleman, whose name is an assumed name in that story, and we’re gonna get him and the other SIVs out,” Klain said.
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