By Andrea Shalal and Jonathan Landay
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden spoke on Sunday with the families of three Americans detained in Afghanistan by its Taliban rulers since 2022, and emphasized his commitment to bringing home Americans wrongfully held overseas, the White House said.
Biden’s administration has been negotiating with the Taliban since at least July about a U.S. proposal to release the three Americans – Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmood Habibi – in exchange for Muhammad Rahim al-Afghani, a high-profile prisoner held in Guantanamo Bay, Reuters reported last week, citing a source familiar with the discussions.
Efforts to secure the release of the Americans continue, a second source familiar with the initiative said on Sunday.
Corbett and Habibi were detained in separate incidents in August 2022 a year after the Taliban seized Kabul amid the chaotic U.S. troop withdrawal. Glezmann was detained later in 2022 while visiting as a tourist.
Ahmad Habibi, Mahmood Habibi’s brother, who was on the call on Sunday, welcomed the discussion with Biden.
“President Biden was very clear in telling us that he would not trade Rahim if the Taliban do not let my brother go,” he said. “He said he would not leave him behind. My family is very grateful that he is standing up for my brother.”
The Taliban, which denies holding Habibi, had countered the U.S. proposal with an offer to exchange Glezmann and Corbett for Rahim and two others, one of the sources told Reuters last week.
The White House noted that Biden has brought home more than 75 Americans unjustly detained around the world, including from Myanmar, China, Gaza, Haiti, Iran, Russia, Rwanda, Venezuela and West Africa. His administration also brought home all Americans detained in Afghanistan before the U.S. military withdrawal, it said.
“President Biden and his team have worked around the clock, often in partnership with key allies, to negotiate for the release of Americans held hostage or unjustly detained abroad so that they can be reunited with their families, and will continue to do so throughout the remainder of the term,” it added.
A Senate intelligence committee report on the agency’s so-called enhanced interrogation program called Rahim an “al Qaeda facilitator” and said he was arrested in Pakistan in June 2007 and “rendered” to the CIA the following month.
He was kept in a secret CIA “black site,” where he was subjected to tough interrogation methods, including extensive sleep deprivation, and then sent to Guantanamo Bay in March 2008, the report said.
Biden last week sent 11 Guantanamo detainees to Oman, reducing the prisoner population at the detention center in Cuba by nearly half as part of its effort to close the facility as the president prepares to leave office on Jan. 20.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, Jonathan Landay and Katharine Jackson in Washington; Editing by Diane Craft and Matthew Lewis)
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