In a roughly 30-minute phone call Sunday afternoon, President Biden delivered difficult news to the families of three Americans detained by the Taliban. He had not reached a deal with the Taliban to release their loved ones from captivity, despite what U.S. officials described to CBS News as a significant offer the United States had made to Doha days earlier. The United States considers Ryan Corbett and George Glezmann to be wrongly detained by the Taliban and describes Mahmood Habibi, who has dual American and Afghan nationality, as “unjustly detained” since 2022.
FBI Public Notice
Ahmad Shah Habibi, Mahmood Habibi’s brother, told CBS News that during the conversation, Biden made it clear that he would not accept the Taliban’s demand that the United States release Muhammed Rahim al Afghani, a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, unless the Taliban, now the Afghan government also releases Mahmood. An NSC spokesperson declined to respond to a CBS inquiry about this specific claim.
Mahmood Habibi disappeared in Afghanistan in 2022 and the Taliban denied kidnapping him. In a public notice Published by the FBI in August 2024, the agency said it “believes” Habibi was kidnapped by the Taliban military or security forces and “has not been heard from since her disappearance.” The FBI said in its advisory that Habibi was working as a contractor for a Kabul-based telecommunications company when he disappeared.
The Taliban still maintain that they are not holding Habibi in custody.
“No, we don’t,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told CBS News on Monday.
When asked if Mahmoud had disappeared in Afghanistan, Mujahid said: “That’s not clear either, because we didn’t know him before.”
Ahmad Habibi told CBS News: “My family has every confidence that my brother is alive. There are things that neither we nor the US government can say publicly, but Mahmood’s case is different from that of two other Americans.”
“We know that other families are desperate to bring their loved ones home and I told the president that we want them to return too,” Ahmad Habibi added. “But anyone speculating about my brother’s death is only fueling the Taliban’s claims. We are grateful that President Biden has committed not to leave Mahmood behind,” and he said the national security adviser , Jake Sullivan, had also given similar assurances.
The FBI declined to comment.
Courtesy of the Corbett family
Corbettwho speaks fluent Pashtun, was working for local non-governmental organizations before starting a microcredit and consulting business in Kabul when he was arrested with three associates – a German and two Afghans – during a business trip in northern Afghanistan in 2022.
Glezmann is an Atlanta native who was arrested while sightseeing in December 2022.
James Foley Foundation Website
Ryan Corbett’s family is publicly calling on Mr Biden to consider a deal to bring him and Glezmann home.
“We hope that President Biden will have the courage to take the deal before him, given that the lives of many Americans rest on his shoulders,” Erin Pelton, a spokesperson for the Corbett family, told CBS News.
Corbett’s wife, Anna Corbett, described the call with the president during an appearance on Fox News on Monday.
“He was very kind and empathetic, but what I heard him say was that he wasn’t going to bring Ryan home, and that was just devastating,” Anna Corbett said. She castigated Mr Biden for refusing to accept the terms of a deal proposed by the Taliban. “This is not accepted and it is incredibly overwhelming for our family.”
She launched a public campaign in recent days to urge the new administration to push for her husband’s release, and she traveled to President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence in hopes of pleading in person with Trump. Neither Mr. Biden nor Trump has met with her yet.
Anna Corbett told Fox News that Trump sent new national security adviser and current Florida Rep. Mike Waltz to meet with her. She said he spent more than an hour listening to his family’s story. She expressed frustration that it took more than a year to secure a similar meeting with current national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
The Taliban are demanding that the United States release Muhammed Rahim al-Afghani, who is being held indefinitely under the laws of war at Guantanamo Bay. A source familiar with the matter said the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon opposed Rahim’s release and could not guarantee he no longer posed a threat to the United States. However, the president could waive it if he believed it was in the interest of the United States to finalize the prisoner’s release. to exchange.
Rahim was captured in Pakistan in 2007 by the CIA and was the last detainee sent to Guantanamo prison by the Bush administration in 2008. He was never charged with war crimes, but the Periodic Review Commission has considered that his continued detention constituted a threat to national security. need. Her Intelligence Profile 2016 describes him as an Al-Qaeda messenger.
In its statement acknowledging receipt of the phone call, the White House also noted that Mr Biden was able to bring home US citizens who had been detained before the US exit from Afghanistan in 2021. Corbett, Glezmann and Habibi were arrested after traveling to Afghanistan following the phone call. the return to power of the Taliban. That Taliban ancestry followed by a diplomatic agreement negotiated by the Trump administration the withdrawal of US troops and a surprisingly strong Taliban military offensive that caught the Biden administration off guard, leading to a rushed and chaotic decision. American evacuation. Not wanting to be left without American troops, NATO forces also withdrew.
The United States does not officially recognize the Taliban, with their horrific human rights record, as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, but is in contact with their leaders through U.S. agencies as well as the Qatari government. Last weekend in Doha, the president’s special envoy Roger Carstens and NSC head Jen Daskal insisted that a deal be reached with the Taliban to free the Americans.
A U.S. official called the Doha meetings a failure but declined to specify what other people the Biden administration was prepared to offer to the Taliban as part of a possible swap. The White House described Biden’s efforts as continuing through the end of his term.
Mr. Biden has devoted much of his career to foreign policy, and that part of his legacy is extremely important to him. In a speech Monday at the State Department, the president will describe the United States’ chaotic exit from Afghanistan, arguably its greatest foreign policy failure, as ending America’s longest war.
contributed to this report.
Marguerite Brennan
