US offered to swap Guantanamo prisoner to free detained Americans in Afghanistan

The US offered to trade a Guantanamo Bay prisoner in exchange for the release of three Americans held in Afghanistan, a source familiar told CNN.

The US offered to trade a Guantanamo Bay prisoner in exchange for the release of three Americans held in Afghanistan, a source familiar told CNN. The US has been in discussions with the Taliban for months about a deal to free Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmoud Habibi, all of whom were detained in Afghanistan in 2022. The Taliban has not acknowledged detaining Habibi. The US presented an offer to trade Muhammad Rahim al Afghani, alleged to have been a “close associate” of Osama bin Laden, for the three Americans. The Taliban countered by asking for Rahim and two other people. Roger Carstens, the top US hostage envoy, was in Doha, Qatar, in recent days and presented a new and “significant” offer to the Taliban, according to another source. They did not provide details about the new offer. The Biden administration has had success securing the release of Americans wrongfully detained abroad, most recently from China and Russia. However, the efforts to bring the Americans home from Afghanistan are likely to face political headwinds amplified by the deadly US withdrawal in August 2021 that saw the Taliban come to power. A spokesperson for the US National Security Council would not confirm the details of the offers, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.