President Biden spoke with relatives of three Americans held in Afghanistan, discussing a potential deal to bring them home. The deal reportedly involves exchanging one of the detainees for a Guantanamo Bay prisoner.
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 he leaves office next week.
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. 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 another person have since been freed. 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. 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. Rahim is considered 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.”,
AFGHANISTAN AMERICANS BIDEN TALIBAN GUANTANAMO
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