The Afghan Taliban have released a video showing the handover of their prisoner US Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl to American forces.
The release, which was in exchange for five Taliban detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, has generated a political storm in the US, with Republicans accusing the White House of acting illegally and potentially putting other Americans in dangerous areas at risk.
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The video, which has not been independently verified, shows Sgt Bergdahl, who was held for five years, dressed in traditional white Afghan clothing with a scarf over his shoulders being taken from a pick-up truck in a hilly area of Khost province as a US military Blackhawk helicopter lands to collect him.
A male voice speaking over the film says: "We told them there are 18 armed fighters and the Americans said that's all right."
Three western-looking men in civilian clothing collect Sgt Bergdahl, who is led to them by two captors, one of whom is carrying a white flag. The camera pans to the armed Taliban fighters in the surrounding area, while another Blackhawk helicopter is filmed circling overhead.
As the helicopter carrying Sgt Bergdahl takes off, a message in English flashes up: "Don't come back to Afghanistan."
The former Guantánamo detainees will be kept for a year in Qatar, the Gulf state which brokered the exchange,
John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, said the White House had broken a pledge to tell Congress when a prisoner exchange was likely.
Other critics said the president had violated a law requiring Congress to be given 30 days' advance notice of prisoner releases from Guantánamo and added that the released Taliban prisoners could re-emerge as threats to US national security.
At the same time, some soldiers who served with Sgt Bergdahl suggested in interviews arranged by Republican strategists that he was guilty of desertion for allegedly walking off his base unarmed in 2009.
John McHugh, the US secretary of the army, said on Tuesday that it would review the circumstances of Sgt Bergdahl's disappearance and captivity in a "comprehensive, co-ordinated effort" once the sergeant was recovering.
President Barack Obama, during a trip to Warsaw on Tuesday, said the administration "consulted with Congress for quite some time about the possibility that we might need to execute a prisoner exchange in order to recover Sergeant Bergdahl".
He added: ""We saw an opportunity. We were concerned about Sergeant Bergdahl's health . . . The process was truncated because we wanted to make sure we did not miss that window."
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