Taliban Releases American Held for 2 Years

An American man who was abducted more than two years ago while traveling through Afghanistan as a tourist has been released by the Taliban in a deal brokered by US and Qatari negotiators, the State Department said Thursday. George Glezmann, an airline mechanic from Atlanta, is the third American detainee to be released by the Taliban since January, reports the AP. He was seized by the Taliban's intelligence services in December 2022 and was designated by the US government as wrongfully detained the following year. He was being accompanied back to the US, through Qatar's capital, Doha, by Adam Boehler, who has been handling hostage issues for President Trump's administration. Qatar has hosted negotiations between the US and the Taliban over the years.

The release of Glezmann is part of what the Taliban has previously described as the "normalization" of ties between the US and Afghanistan following the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Most countries still don't recognize the Taliban's rule. Glezmann's release follows a separate deal, arranged in the final days of the Biden administration and also mediated by the Qataris, that secured the releases of Ryan Corbett and William McKenty. The Taliban's Foreign Ministry in Kabul said at the time that those two US citizens had been exchanged for Khan Mohammed, who was sentenced to two life terms in 2008 after being convicted under US narco-terrorism laws. Unlike in that arrangement, the US didn't give up any prisoner to secure Glezmann's release, which was seen as a goodwill gesture.

The Taliban disclosed earlier Thursday that Boehler had been meeting on hostage issues with a delegation that included Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. President Biden contemplated before he left office an earlier proposal that would have involved the release of Glezmann and other Americans for Muhammad Rahim, one of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But Biden told families during a call in January that he wouldn't support trading Rahim unless the Taliban released Afghan-American businessman Mahmood Habibi. US officials believe the Taliban is holding Habibi, but the Taliban has denied it.

(More Taliban stories.)