KABUL (Reuters) -The United States has freed an Afghan convicted by an American court on charges of drug smuggling and terrorism in exchange for two U.S. citizens held in Afghanistan, authorities in Kabul said on Tuesday.
Afghan officials said the man, Khan Mohammad, had landed in Kabul after being released. Mohammad was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2008 by a U.S. court, which was the first conviction on narco-terrorism charges, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
The prisoner exchange was the result of “long and productive” negotiations between Afghan and American authorities, Afghanistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Mohammad was arrested in eastern Afghanistan in 2006 and extradited to the U.S a year later, according to the DOJ website.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban administration, confirmed that two Americans had been released, but declined to identify them.
One of the Americans released was named Ryan Corbett, according to a statement on a site run by his family. Corbett had been in Taliban detention since 2022, the family site said.
“We are overwhelmed with joy that Ryan is on his way home,” the family said on the site.
CNN and the New York Times reported on Sunday that the other American released was William McKenty.
“The Islamic Emirate views the actions of the United States positively when they contribute to normalizing and expanding relations between the two countries,” Afghanistan’s foreign office statement said.
It thanked Qatar for its role in the exchange.
A spokesman for the ministry, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, confirmed Mohammad had landed in Kabul and rejoined his family.
WHO WERE THE MEN RELEASED?
According to the DOJ website, Mohammad was a member of the Afghan Taliban who had been sentenced to life imprisonment on two counts at the age of 38 in the first ever narcotics-terrorism charges brought in the United States.
The website quoted court records saying Mohammad was “a violent jihadist and narcotics trafficker” who “sought to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan using rockets.”
Corbett’s family said he ran a non-government organization called Bloom Afghanistan, which was a social enterprise focused on strengthening Afghanistan’s private sector.
He was in Afghanistan to renew his business visa in 2022 when he was detained by the Taliban.
McKenty’s family had asked the U.S. government to keep his details private, according to the New York Times.
The prisoner exchange was years in the making and finally struck in the very last hours of Democratic former President Joe Biden’s time in office before Republican President Donald Trump took over on Monday, CNN reported.
Two other American captives remain in Afghanistan: George Glezmann, a former airline mechanic, and Mahmood Habibi, a naturalized American, who was seized soon after a U.S. strike in Afghanistan killed Ayman al-Zawahri, the leader of Al Qaeda, the New York Times said.
Corbett’s family praised both the Trump and Biden administrations for the exchange but expressed regret that Glezmann and Habibi were also not freed, according to a statement.
(Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul; Additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar, Asif Shahzad and Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad; writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Gibran Peshimam; Editing by Sonali Paul and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
