During a meeting with the Taliban delegation in Doha, the US special representatives emphasised on the "immediate and unconditional" release of US citizens who had been detained in Afghanistan.
The US delegation has called the detention of US citizens a “significant obstacle to positive engagement” with the Taliban.
On July 30 and 31, US Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West; Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights Rina Amiri, and Chief of the US Mission to Afghanistan based in Doha Karen Decker, along with other US officials met and discussed issues of critical interest with senior Taliban representatives and the group’s technocrats in Doha.
While asking for the release of detained American officials, the US envoys did not give details about the number of Americans in detention under the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, earlier, the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had referred to the detention of several US citizens by the Taliban and said that about 175 US citizens remained in Afghanistan, some of whom had entered the country after the fall of the Afghan government in August 2021.
The identity of the detained US citizens remains unknown because their families have requested to hide their details and have asked the US authorities not to speak publicly about their cases.
In the past, the Taliban have taken American citizens hostage and exchanged them for the release of their high-ranking officials from the Guantanamo prison.
In the last case, the Taliban had been able to secure the release of Bashir Noorzai, a major drug trafficker and one of the main financial supporters of the group in exchange for Mark Frerichs, an American engineer who was kidnapped in 2020 while working on construction projects in Afghanistan.
Noorzai had been arrested in New York in 2005 and had been serving two life sentences since 2009.
