Biden spoke with the families of Americans detained in Afghanistan, the White House said, according to Reuters.

By Andrea Shallal and Jonathan Laday

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The President of the United States, Joe Biden, He spoke Sunday with the families of three Americans held captive by Taliban rulers in Afghanistan since 2022 and emphasized their commitment to bringing back Americans wrongfully detained overseas, the White House said.

The Biden administration has been negotiating with the Taliban since at least July over a U.S. proposal to release three Americans, Ryan Corbett, George Glazeman and Mahmoud Habibi, in exchange for high-profile detainee Mohammad Rahim al-Afghani held at Guantanamo Bay. Reuters reported last week, citing a source familiar with the discussions.

Efforts to free the Americans are continuing, a source familiar with the second initiative said on Sunday.

Corbett and Habibi will recall the withdrawal of American troops from the violence in August 2022, a year after the Taliban took control of Kabul. Gleizmann was arrested later in 2022 while visiting as a tourist.

Ahmed Habibi, Mahmoud Habibi’s brother, who was on the call Sunday, welcomed the conversation with Biden.

“President Biden was very clear when he told us that he would not trade Rahim if the Taliban did not release my brother,” he said. He said he would not leave him behind. My family is very grateful for standing up for my brother.

The Taliban, which admitted to capturing Habibi, opposed the U.S. proposal to exchange Glazeman and Corbett for Rahim and two others, one of the sources told Reuters last week.

The White House announced that Biden had repatriated more than 75 Americans who had been wrongfully imprisoned around the world, including from Myanmar, China, Gaza, Haiti, Iran, Russia, Rwanda, Venezuela and West Africa. He said his administration had brought home all the Americans imprisoned in Afghanistan before the US military withdrawal began.

“President Biden and his team have worked around the clock, often working with key allies, to negotiate the release of Americans held hostage or wrongfully imprisoned to be reunited with their families. The rest of the time,” he added.

A Senate Intelligence Committee report on the agency’s so-called Enhanced Investigations Program named Rahim as an “al Qaeda coordinator” who was captured in Pakistan in June 2007 and “turned over to the CIA” the following month.

He was secretly held at the CIA’s “black site,” subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, including sleep deprivation, and then sent to Guantanamo Bay in March 2008, the report said.

Biden sent 11 Guantanamo detainees to Oman last week, roughly halving the prison’s inmate population in Cuba as the president prepares to leave office on Jan. 20 in an effort to close the facility.