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In 2012 John McCain called the Guantanamo Five “the worst murderers in human history,” according to Rolling Stone.

The five men, who are now in Qatar and barred from traveling for a year, do not really live up to their monster billing, however.

Khairullah Said Wali Khairkhwa, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Mullah Noorullah Noori, Mullah Mohammad Fazl and Mohammad Nabi Omari had been in Guantanamo Bay since the early days of the war.

Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analyst Network spent weeks researching the five men’s biographies in 2013, and came up with a much more nuanced picture.

“It is mystifying to know where the Guantanamo Bay authorities got the idea that Khairkhwa was known, in their words, as a ‘hardliner in terms of Taliban philosophy.’ During the Emirate, he was considered one of the more moderate Taliban in leadership circles,” she writes.

Noori and Fazl had negotiated surrender of Taliban fighters to General Abdul Rashid Dostum in November, 2001, based on what they believed was a promise of safe passage home. Instead, hundreds of Taliban fighters were massacred, and Fazl and Noori were arrested.

Wasiq was taken in a sting operation — according to Clark, he was cooperating with the US at the time and was trying to arrange reintegration with the new government. Instead, he was arrested and sent to Guantanamo.

The Guantanamo Docket, a project of The New York Times based on the WikiLeaks documents, also yields some interesting information.

Omari, for example, was a minor Taliban figure who said he was selling used cars when the war started. He also claimed that he was given $500 and a cell phone by a CIA officer named Mark and told to go find Mullah Omar. When he failed to deliver, he was arrested.

Not a very impressive background for what the media are calling the “worst of the worst.”

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http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/140603/bowe-bergdahl-guantanamo-prisoner-swap