In a roughly 30-minute phone call Sunday afternoon, President Biden delivered difficult news to the families of three Americans held by the Taliban. He did not have a deal with the Taliban to free their loved ones from captivity, despite what U.S. officials described to CBS News as a significant offer the U.S. had extended in Doha days earlier. The U.S. considers Ryan Corbett and George Glezmann to be wrongfully detained by the Taliban, and describes Mahmood Habibi, who holds dual American and Afghan citizenship, as “unjustly held” since 2022.
FBI public notice
Ahmad Shah Habibi, the brother of Mahmood Habibi, told CBS News that during the conversation, Mr. Biden clarified that he would not agree to the Taliban’s demand that the U.S. release Muhammed Rahim al Afghani, a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, unless the Taliban, now the government of Afghanistan, also releases Mahmood. An NSC spokesman declined to respond to a CBS inquiry about that specific claim.
Mahmood Habibi disappeared in Afghanistan in 2022, and the Taliban denied abducting him. In a public notice posted by the FBI in August 2024, the agency said it “believed” that Habibi was taken by Taliban military or security forces and “has not been heard from since his disappearance.” The FBI said in its notice that Habibi was working as a contractor for a Kabul-based telecom company when he disappeared.
The Taliban still say they do not have Habibi in custody.
“No, we don’t have him,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told CBS News Monday.
Asked whether Mahmoud had disappeared in Afghanistan, Mujahid said, “It’s not clear either, because we didn’t know him before.”
Ahmad Habibi told CBS News, “My family has every confidence that my brother is alive. There are things that neither we nor the U.S. government can say publicly, but Mahmood’s case is different from the other two Americans.”
“We know the other families are desperate to get their loved ones home and I told the president we want them home, too,” Ahmad Habibi added. “But anyone speculating that my brother is dead is just feeding into Taliban claims. We are grateful that President Biden committed to not leave Mahmood behind,” and he said that national security adviser Jake Sullivan had also made similar assurances.
The FBI declined to comment.
Courtesy Corbett family
Corbett, who is fluent in Pashto, was working for local nongovernmental organizations before starting a microloan and consulting business in Kabul when he was arrested with three associates — one German and two Afghans — during a business trip to northern Afghanistan in 2022.
Glezmann is an Atlanta native who was detained while on a tourist visit in December 2022.
James Foley Foundation website
The family of Ryan Corbett is publicly calling on Mr. Biden to consider a deal to bring him and Glezmann home.
“We hope that President Biden will have the courage to take the deal in front of him, given that the lives of several Americans rest on his shoulders,” Erin Pelton, a spokesperson for the Corbett family, told CBS News.
Corbett’s wife, Anna Corbett, described the call with the president during an appearance on Fox News on Monday.
“He was very kind and empathetic, but what I heard him say is he’s not bringing Ryan home, and that was just devastating,” Anna Corbett said. She blasted Mr. Biden for refusing to agree to the Taliban’s terms for a deal. “It is not being taken and it is incredibly crushing to our family.”
She has launched a public campaign in recent days to urge the incoming administration to press for her husband’s release, and she traveled to President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence in hopes of making an in-person plea to Trump. Neither Mr. Biden nor Trump have met with her yet.
Anna Corbett did tell Fox News that Trump sent incoming national security adviser and current Florida Rep. Mike Waltz to meet with her. She said he spent more than an hour listening to her family’s story. She expressed frustration that it took more than a year to get a similar meeting with the current national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
The Taliban have been demanding that the U.S. release Muhammed Rahim al-Afghani, who is being held in indefinite law-of-war detention at Guantanamo Bay. A source familiar with his case said the U.S. intelligence community and Pentagon oppose Rahim’s release and could not guarantee that he no longer represented a threat to the U.S. However, the president could waive that if he determined it were in the U.S. interest to finalize a prisoner swap.
Rahim was captured in Pakistan in 2007 by the CIA and was the last detainee sent to the Guantanamo prison facility by the Bush administration in 2008. He has never been charged with war crimes, but the periodic review board has deemed his continued detention a national security necessity. His 2016 intelligence profile describes him as a courier for al Qaeda.
In its statement acknowledging the phone call, the White House also noted that Mr. Biden had been able to bring home U.S. citizens who had been detained before the U.S. exit from Afghanistan in 2021. Corbett, Glezmann and Habibi were detained after traveling to Afghanistan following the Taliban’s return to power. That ascendance of the Taliban followed a diplomatic deal negotiated by the Trump administration for U.S. troops to withdraw and a surprisingly strong Taliban military offensive that caught the Biden administration off guard, leading to a hasty and chaotic U.S. evacuation. Unwilling to remain without U.S. troops, NATO forces also pulled out.
The U.S. does not officially recognize the Taliban, with its horrific human rights record, as the legitimate government of Afghanistan but has been in contact with its leaders through U.S. agencies as well as via the Qatari government. Last weekend in Doha, Special Presidential Envoy Roger Carstens and NSC official Jen Daskal pressed for a deal with the Taliban to free the Americans.
A U.S. official described the Doha meetings as unsuccessful but declined to detail which other individuals the Biden administration was willing to offer to the Taliban as part of a potential trade. The White House described the Biden efforts as continuing through the end of his term.
Mr. Biden has dedicated much of his career to foreign policy, and that portion of his legacy is extremely important to him. In a speech Monday at the State Department, the president will describe the chaotic U.S. exit from Afghanistan, arguably his biggest foreign policy failure, as having successfully ended America’s longest war.
contributed to this report.
