In the final hours of his presidency, President Joe Biden successfully negotiated a prisoner exchange with the Taliban, resulting in the release of U.S. citizens Ryan Corbett and William Wallace McKenty from Taliban custody.
However, U.S. citizens George Glezmann and Mahmood Habibi were not included in the deal.
On Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed concern on X, stating he was "just hearing" of additional detentions of Americans by the Taliban.
"If this is true, we will have to immediately place a VERY BIG bounty on their top leaders, maybe even bigger than the one we had on Bin Laden," Rubio wrote.
2 AMERICANS RELEASED IN EXCHANGE FOR TALIBAN PRISONER
Dennis Fitzpatrick, who is coordinating efforts for Glezmann’s release outside the U.S. government, claimed Glezmann was "never a serious priority for the Biden White House."
"President Biden and [former National Security Advisor] Jake Sullivan decided to leave George Glezmann in Kabul for no good reason," Fitzpatrick stated to Fox News Digital. "We are confident that President Trump’s clear-eyed leadership will secure George’s release to his family."
Fitzpatrick emphasized that the 66-year-old Glezmann is "a totally innocent man" and was "a hard-working, blue-collar airline mechanic before he was wrongfully detained. He doesn’t deserve to be used as a pawn."
Glezmann has been in detention since December 5, 2022, when he traveled to Afghanistan to "explore the cultural landscape and rich history of the country," as noted in a Senate resolution from July 2024 calling for his immediate release. The resolution highlights that Glezmann’s mental and physical condition is deteriorating due to his detention in a nine-foot square underground cell, with limited communication with his family and severe health issues including "facial tumors, hypertension, severe malnutrition, and other medical conditions."
While the Taliban acknowledge holding Glezmann, they deny having Mahmood Habibi in custody.
Habibi’s brother, Ahmad, informed Fox News Digital that the family "know[s] that my brother is still in Taliban custody. I can’t share too much about that because we don’t want to put him or others at risk. But anyone accepting the Taliban’s hollow suggestions that they do not have him is falling for their lies."
"We have multiple witnesses to his arrest by the [General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI)]. We also have multiple witnesses who were held with him at GDI headquarters. The Taliban has always claimed they don’t have him and don’t know who he is. How do they explain the obvious contradictions to this?"
Ahmad also claimed the family "know[s] that the U.S. government has technical evidence that Mahmood was in GDI custody long after his arrest."
He alleges that the Biden National Security Council "micromanaged the State Department’s effort to secure my brother’s release" and "blocked [the State Department] from using the data in their discussions with the Taliban, even though we told them that it would have directly confronted the Taliban’s claims that they never heard of my brother."
Neither the State Department nor the National Security Council has responded to Fox News Digital’s inquiries regarding Ahmad’s claims.
Fox News Digital also attempted to reach out to Taliban spokespersons Zabihullah Mujahid and Suhail Shaheen about Habibi’s detention, asking Mujahid what happened to Habibi after his arrest by the GDI. Mujahid did not respond, while Shaheen directed Fox News Digital to contact the GDI and claimed no knowledge of the situation.
The Taliban have long sought the release of Guantanamo Bay detainee and al Qaeda facilitator Muhammad Rahim in exchange for the Americans they admit were in their prisons. Ahmad Habibi stated to CBS News that President Biden assured him in a January 12 phone call that the U.S. would not release Rahim unless the Taliban released Habibi.
Former Principal Deputy Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Hugh Dugan expressed to Fox News Digital that the Trump administration could pursue multiple "lines of effort" to secure the release of Glezmann and Habibi.
Dugan mentioned that this could involve "outright rescue by the military" or ongoing "subtle diplomacy in the background."
He acknowledged that "to say we’re doing everything we can … is not satisfying to a family member, frankly, or anybody, and they want to hear that you’re continuing to identify what might have eluded us all along or that there’s a crack in the horizon that’s opening. "
"We need to realize that this might be another step in our path to recovery, and a line of effort has to be amended to accommodate new realities at any given moment."
