Biden speaks with relatives of Americans held by Taliban

WASHINGTON –

President Joe Biden spoke Sunday with relatives of three Americans the U.S. government is looking to bring home from Afghanistan, but it was unclear from the call if a deal to bring them back that is now on the table could be completed before the he leaves office next week.

Biden’s call with family members of Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmoud Habibi took place in the waning days of his administration as officials try to negotiate a deal that could bring them home in exchange for Muhammad Rahim, one of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Corbett, who had lived in Afghanistan with his family at the time of the 2021 collapse of the U.S.-backed government, was abducted by the Taliban in August 2022 while on a business trip and Glezmann, an airline mechanic from Atlanta, was taken by the Taliban’s intelligence services in December 2022 while traveling through the country.

Officials believe the Taliban is still holding both men as well as Habibi, an Afghan American businessman who worked as a contractor for a Kabul-based telecommunications company and also went missing in 2022. The FBI has said that Habibi and his driver were taken along with 29 other employees of the company, but that all except for Habibi and other person have since been freed.

The Taliban has denied that it has Habibi, complicating the talks with the U.S. government.

On the call Sunday, Biden told the families that his administration would not trade Rahim, who has been held at Guantanamo since 2008, unless the Taliban releases Habibi, according to a statement from Habibi’s brother, Ahmad Habibi.

“President Biden was very clear in telling us that he would not trade Rahim if the Taliban do not let my brother go,” the statement said. “He said he would not leave him behind. My family is very grateful that he is standing up for my brother.”

Ryan Fayhee, a lawyer acting on behalf of Corbett’s relatives, said the family was grateful to Biden for the call but also implored him to act on the deal.

“A deal is now on the table and the decision to accept it — as imperfect as it may be — resides exclusively with the President,” Fayhee said in a statement. “Hard decisions make great Presidents, and we hope and believe that President Biden will not let perfection be the enemy of the good when American lives are at stake.”

If a deal is not done before Jan. 20, it would fall to the incoming Trump administration to pick up negotiations, though it’s unclear if officials would take a different approach when it comes to releasing a Guantanamo detainee the U.S. government has deemed a danger.

Just 15 men remain at Guantanamo, down from a peak of nearly 800 under former President George W. Bush.

Rahim is one of just three remaining detainees never charged but also never deemed safe for the U.S. to even consider transferring to other countries, as it has done with hundreds of other Muslim detainees brought to Guantanamo but never charged.

The U.S. has described Rahim as a direct adviser, courier and operative for Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida figures and a continuing threat to U.S. national security, despite never charging him or otherwise formally making public any evidence against Rahim in his 17 years at Guantanamo.

Successive U.S. administrations have kept Rahim under wraps to a degree remarkable even for the military-run detention at Guantanamo.

His attorney, James Connell, told a U.N. human rights commission recently that Rahim was being “systematically silenced” by the U.S. Connell claimed to the same panel that a U.S. official had told him “every word Rahim utters on any topic is classified on the basis of national security.”

The Biden administration in September 2022 swapped a convicted Taliban drug lord imprisoned in the U.S. for an American civilian contractor who’d been detained by the Taliban for more than two years.

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Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.