The U.S. State Department and the Afghan Taliban terrorist organization both confirmed this weekend that at least two, and potentially three, American citizens are currently under Taliban criminal custody in Afghanistan.
The Taliban, the uncontested government of Afghanistan since 2021, named two of the Americans as George Glezmann and Ryan Corbett, in a confirmation to the Middle East news outlet the Media Line. The State Department identified a third American, Mahmood Habibi, as being held hostage by the Taliban, but the Media Line said the Taliban spokesman in contact with it “declined to talk about” that individual. Habibi is believed to have been born in Afghanistan despite holding American citizenship, meaning the Taliban may be refusing to recognize his American citizenship and treating him as exclusively Afghan.
The revelation on Sunday that the Taliban was holding three Americans prisoner followed comments by the terrorist organization’s top spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, last week in which he claimed the jihadists were interested in negotiating the release of Afghans held in police custody in the United States. Mujahid suggested a prisoner swap for jihadists detained in the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, was possible.
The Washington Examiner, which confirmed the names of the three Americans with the State Department, reported on Saturday that two of the three men, Corbett and Glezmann, are believed to be suffering health problems in Taliban custody. Glezmann was reportedly arrested in December 2022, while Corbett was arrested in July of that year.
“The Washington Examiner has previously reported that Corbett was detained in July 2022 on a trip to check in on the Afghan employees of his company, Bloom Afghanistan,” the outlet noted. “Corbett is now being held in a 9-by-9-foot basement cell. Captivity has caused Corbett to ‘suffer from fainting, seizures, and discolored extremities’ while his health declines rapidly.”
Habibi was arrested in August 2022, a year after the Taliban takeover. It is unclear exactly why Taliban terrorists detained him, but the Examiner noted he was an employee of a company, ARX Communications, the jihadists suggested “was involved in the targeting of former al Qaeda senior leader Ayman al Zawahiri.”
The Media Line independently confirmed the detentions with the State Department on Monday – and with the Taliban.
“Both American nationals violated the country’s law, and discussion has been held with the US officials in this regard,” Taliban spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat told the outlet, omitting any mention of Habibi.
The reports follow remarks by Mujahid, the top representative of the Taliban to the media, suggesting that the Taliban would seek to negotiate for the release of its members from American prison.
“Afghanistan’s conditions must be met. We have our citizens who are imprisoned in the US and Guantánamo,” Mujahid reportedly said a week ago, according to the Media Line. “We should free our prisoners in exchange for them. Just as their prisoners are important to America, Afghans are equally important to us.”
Mujahid claimed that recent talks between Taliban terrorists and U.S. officials in Qatar including the issue of “a prisoner release.”
The Taliban’s “foreign ministry” further confirmed on Sunday that it is working to get Afghans imprisoned abroad freed, the Afghan news agency Tolo News reported. Tolo focused on Afghans imprisoned closer to home, however, in nations such as Iran and Pakistan.
“In the past three years, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Emirate has freed imprisoned Afghans from Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, the UAE, and many other countries, and serious efforts are currently underway to resolve this challenge,” a Taliban “foreign ministry” spokesman said. Tolo estimated that as many as 11,000 Afghans are currently in police custody in Iran and Pakistan, many of them illegal migrants.
The numbers in Guantánamo Bay are microscopic in comparison. According to the left-wing New York Times, which maintains a Guantánamo detainee tracker, only one Afghan national remains in custody out of 30 imprisoned there as a result of the post-September 11 War on Terror.
The Times identifies the lone Afghan as Muhammad Rahim, the last detainee to be transferred to Guantánamo after his arrest.
“The Periodic Review Board has repeatedly deemed Mr. Rahim’s continued detention a national security necessity, most recently on Nov. 21, 2023,” it noted.
The Taliban successfully negotiated the release of two Afghan nationals from Guantánamo in February, Abdul Karim and Abdul Zahir. The two individuals spent over 20 years at the site, Voice of America reported.
The Taliban has been striving to legitimize itself to the world, as it has failed to obtain the seat representing Afghanistan at the United Nations and convinced only one country, China, to allow the appointment of a formal Taliban ambassador to its capital. As part of this campaign, Taliban leaders have enthusiastically denied any ties to al-Qaeda or related groups.
“There is no one related to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan,” the Taliban insisted in February after the United Nations Security Council published a report revealing that al-Qaeda had built “up to eight” training camps and a variety of safe houses in Afghanistan since American President Joe Biden announced an extension of the 20-year Afghan war in April 2021, resulting in a campaign of conquest that toppled the U.S.-backed government in Kabul in August of that year.
While the Taliban began claiming to distance itself from al-Qaeda immediately following the fall of Kabul, the discovery of al-Qaeda chief Zawahiri in the nation’s capital significantly damaged the credibility of those claims. An American airstrike eliminated al-Qaeda chief Zawahiri in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the same month that Habibi was detained.
Zawahiri was reportedly openly living in Kabul under Taliban protection and reportedly spent time openly on the balcony of the home in the luxury neighborhood where he was killed. Some reports indicated the safe house belonged to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the “interior minister” of the Taliban government and the head of the Haqqani Network, a terrorist organization that serves as a bridge between the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
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