Joe 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. File
| Photo Credit: AP

“President Joe Biden spoke on with relatives of three Americans the U.S. government is looking to bring home from Afghanistan but no agreement has been reached on a deal to get them back,” family members said.

Mr. Biden’s call with family members of Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmood 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.

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Corbett, who had lived in Afghanistan with his family at the time of the 2021 collapse of the U.S.-backed government, was abducted by the Taliban in August 2022 while on a business trip and Glezmann, an airline mechanic from Atlanta, was taken by the Taliban’s intelligence services in December 2022 while travelling 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.

The Taliban has denied that it has Habibi, complicating talks with the U.S. government and the prospect of finalising a deal.

On the call, Mr. 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.”

Dennis Fitzpatrick, a lawyer acting on behalf of Glezmann’s family, expressed dismay at the lack of progress, saying in a statement, “President Biden and his national security adviser are choosing to leave George Glezmann in Afghanistan. A deal is available to bring him home. The White House’s inaction in this case is inhumane.” Ryan Fayhee, a lawyer acting on behalf of Corbett’s relatives, said the family was grateful to Mr. 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.”

The White House confirmed the call with the families in a statement in which it said they “discussed the U.S. government’s continuing efforts to reunite these three Americans with their families. The president emphasised his administration’s commitment to the cause of bringing home Americans held hostage and wrongfully detained overseas”. A spokesperson did not directly address the complaint from the families.

If a deal is not done before January 20, it would fall to the incoming Mr. 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.

Just 15 men remain at Guantanamo, down from a peak of nearly 800 under former president George W Bush.

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.

The U.S. has described Rahim as a direct advisor, courier and operative for Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaida figures and a continuing threat to US 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.

A case-review panel in periodic security assessments has judged him a lasting danger. One typical review in 2019 cited what it said were his “extensive extremist connections that provide a path to re-engagement” if he were ever released. It claimed he had failed to answer questions from the review panel about his past or speak to any change to a more peaceful outlook.

His attorney, James Connell, told a UN 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”.

The Biden administration in September 2022 swapped a convicted Taliban drug lord imprisoned in the U.S. for an American civilian contractor who’d been detained by the Taliban for more than two years.

Flags fly in front of the tents of Camp Justice in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. File
| Photo Credit: AP

The Pentagon said on Monday that (January 6, 2025) it had transferred 11 Yemeni men to Oman this week after holding them for more than two decades without charge at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The transfer was the latest and biggest push by the Biden administration in its final weeks to clear Guantanamo of the last remaining detainees there who were never charged with a crime.

Guantanamo: a U.S. turned detention site

The latest release brings the total number of men detained at Guantanamo to 15. That’s the fewest since 2002, when President George W. Bush’s administration turned Guantanamo into a detention site for the mostly Muslim men taken into custody around the world in what the U.S. called its “war on terror.” The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and military and covert operations elsewhere followed the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks.

The men in the latest transfer included Shaqawi al Hajj, who had undergone repeated hunger strikes and hospitalizations at Guantanamo to protest his 21 years in prison, preceded by two years of detention and torture in CIA custody, according to the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

Rights groups and some lawmakers have pushed successive U.S. administrations to close Guantanamo or, failing that, release all those detainees never charged with a crime. Guantanamo held about 800 detainees at its peak.

Never-charged detainees of Guantanamo

The Biden administration and administrations before it said they were working on lining up suitable countries willing to take those never-charged detainees. Many of those stuck at Guantanamo were from Yemen, a country split by war, with its capital held by the Iranian-allied Houthi militant group.

The sultanate of Oman, on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, did not acknowledge taking in the prisoners early Tuesday. Officials in the country did not respond to questions from The Associated Press. The key Western ally has taken in some 30 prisoners in the past since the founding of the prison.

However, those prisoners have since been released in circumstances unexplained by Oman. Two Afghans once held by Oman returned to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in February. One Yemeni died in Oman after being told he and 27 others would be repatriated to Yemen, the British activist group CAGE International said.

“Faced with little choice, 26 of the men and their families returned to Yemen after being pressured by the Omani government, which offered each $70,000 as compensation,” the group said. It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the 28th prisoner.

The transfer announced Monday leaves six never-charged men still being held at Guantanamo, two convicted and sentenced inmates, and seven others charged with the 2001 attacks, the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia.