The Taliban authorities announced, this Sunday, September 28, the launch of an American citizen, a week after launching a British couple.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has published an American citizen appointed Amiri,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in X.
He said the detainee had been delivered to Adam Boehler, the special envoy of US President Donald Trump for hostages, who went to Kabul earlier to negotiate an exchange of prisoners.
A release received by the United States
This decision must demonstrate that the Taliban authorities “do not use the questions related to citizens for political purposes and that solutions can be found by diplomatic means,” said the Afghan ministry.
In a press release, the Secretary of State of the United States, Marco Rubio, praised this launch, which “marks an important step.” “Other Americans remain unfairly detained in Afghanistan. President Trump will not rest until all our captive fellow citizens return,” said Marco Rubio.
We know very little about Amiri, whose arrest had remained discreet.
An official who participated in the negotiations said that Amiri “is 36 years old” and “had been arrested in Afghanistan since December 2024”.
The American is directed to the United States, added this same source, under the coverage of anonymity, and added that it would end briefly in Doha for medical controls.
A British couple also launched
The Taliban authorities thanked Qatar, ensuring that he had played a key mediator role in negotiations, as a week before to free a British couple.
On September 20, Peter Reynolds, 80, and his wife Barbie, 76, had been able to leave Afghanistan after almost eight months of detention.
The spouses had acquired Afghan nationality and the Taliban authorities continued to repeat that they were considered as citizens, without announcing the charges against them.
Doha is the privileged interlocutor among the Taliban who returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021 and the international community that does not recognize them, with the exception of Moscow.
It is also through Doha that other foreigners recently abandoned the Afghan cells where they were retained. Among them, the Faye Hall but American, arrested on February 1 in the province of Bamiyan, west of Kabul, in the company of Peter and Barbie Reynolds, his friends, and released at the end of March.
At least one still detained
In January, two Americans were released in exchange for an Afghan fighter, Khan Mohammed, sentenced to Narcoterrois in the United States. Another American aeronautical engineer George Glezmann, had been released after more than two years of detention during a visit to Adam Boehler in Afghanistan in March.
At least another American citizen, Mahmood Habibi, is still arrested in Afghanistan. The United States offers a $ 5 million reward for any information that allows it to be, while Taliban authorities deny any participation in their disappearance in 2022.
In mid -September, Donald Trump had threatened Afghanistan with non -specific reprisals, a few days after mentioning the idea that the United States regained control of the American Bagunram base, which left in 2021, shortly before the return to the power of the Taliban. But any restitution agreement is “impossible,” he replied to the Taliban authorities.
Dozens of foreign citizens have been arrested since the return of the Taliban to power in August 2021. The Taliban actively sought international recognition and investment, their country was devastated by four decades of war, particularly by the Soviet invasion from 1979 to 1989.
But the restrictions imposed on women and girls, excluded from education and public life, constitute important friction points for Westerners. Most countries currently advise to go to Afghanistan.
Source: BFM TV
