US President Joe Biden spoke to relatives of three American citizens who are being held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, family members said no agreement has been reached to bring them back.
Biden’s conversations with family members of Ryan Corbett, George Glazeman and Mahmoud Habibi come in the final days of his administration. Officials are trying to negotiate a deal to release the hostages in exchange for Mohammed Rahim, one of the remaining Afghan detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in the US.
Corbett was living in Afghanistan with his family at the time of the fall of the US-backed Afghan government in 2021. He was kidnapped by the Taliban during a business trip in August 2022, and Glazman, an airline mechanic from Atlanta, was kidnapped by Taliban intelligence services while traveling through the country in December 2022.
Officials believe the Taliban are still holding both men, as well as Habibi, hostage. Habibi is an Afghan American businessman who worked as a contractor for a Kabul-based telecommunications company and went missing in 2022.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said Habibi and his driver were taken along with 29 other company employees, but all but Habibi and one other man were released.
The Taliban have denied Habibie is in their possession, complicating prospects for negotiations and finalizing a deal with the US government. In the phone call, Biden told the families of the hostages that his administration would not release Rahim until the Taliban released Habibi, according to a statement from Habibi’s brother Ahmed Habibi. Rahim has been kept in Guantanamo since 2008.
