(CNN) — An American citizen who has spent greater than two years in detention in Afghanistan was launched on Thursday, and is now on his method to the US, a supply with data of the state of affairs advised CNN.
George Glezmann, 66, was launched after weeks of negotiations led by Qatari and US mediators. The supply mentioned a breakthrough was made by Qatar throughout a current assembly with the Taliban.
US hostage envoy Adam Boehler had additionally been in shut contact together with his Qatari counterparts to safe Glezmann’s launch, the supply mentioned. Boehler was anticipated to accompany Glezmann on the journey again to the US from Kabul.
Pictures of Boehler and former US Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad assembly with Taliban officers have been launched by a spokesperson for Afghanistan’s Overseas Ministry on Thursday.
Khalilzad confirmed Glezmann’s launch on X, saying: “At this time is an efficient day. We succeeded in acquiring the discharge of an American citizen, Georg(e) Glezmann, after two years in detention in Kabul.”
“The Taliban authorities agreed to free him as a goodwill gesture to (the US president) and the American individuals. George is on his means house to his household,” he added.
CNN has reached out to the US State Division for remark.
Glezmann was detained by the Taliban in December 2022, some 16 months after the group retook management of Afghanistan, and was declared wrongfully detained by the US in September 2023.
He had traveled to Afghanistan for a five-day journey “to discover the cultural panorama and wealthy historical past of the nation,” in line with US Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who campaigned for Glezmann’s launch.
The 2 lawmakers mentioned final July that Glezmann was held in “a nine-foot by nine-foot cell with different detainees and has been held in solitary confinement and underground for months at a time.”
Within the interval as much as July 2024, Glezmann had not been granted any consular visits by US officers and had “solely seven telephone calls totaling 54 minutes together with his household,” the senators mentioned.
They added that Glezmann acquired “restricted in-person visits with representatives of Qatar.”
The US doesn’t have a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, having closed its embassy there after the Taliban takeover in August 2022. As a substitute, Qatar represents the US in Afghanistan, appearing as its “protecting energy.”
Glezmann is the third US citizen to be free of Afghanistan this yr, after Ryan Corbett and William McKenty have been launched in a prisoner alternate in January.
The deal to launch Corbett and McKenty was struck within the final hours of former President Joe Biden’s time in workplace after the Taliban agreed to swap them for Khan Mohammed, a Taliban member who was serving a life sentence for narco-terrorism in a US jail.
That settlement was additionally facilitated by Qatar, which hosted a number of rounds of US negotiations with the Taliban and in addition supplied logistical assist to the operations to get the pair out of Kabul, in line with a number of individuals acquainted with the small print of the swap.
US officers had needed Glezmann and one other American held in Afghanistan, Mahmoud Habibi, to be a part of the deal, and expressed disappointment on the time that the 2 weren’t handed over in January. Nevertheless, they mentioned they couldn’t flip down the provide for at the very least Corbett and McKenty.
The Taliban has by no means acknowledged holding Habibi however the US nonetheless considers him a hostage.
Glezmann’s spouse Aleksandra Glezmann mentioned final July that her husband’s well being was failing. In a letter to Biden, she wrote that he had a benign tumor on one facet of his face, was shedding imaginative and prescient in a single eye and had developed sores and ulcers on his physique.
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