Afghanistan Peace Campaign“Thank you for bringing me home, and I’ve never been so proud to be an American citizen,” Hall said in a video celebrating her release, posted by President Donald Trump on Truth Social.
“I just want you to know, all the women in the Afghan jail, they always ask me, ‘When is Trump coming?’” Hall said in the video, addressing Trump. “They are waiting for you to come and set them free. … Don’t want to forget all those women who are still in jail and don’t have any rights,” she added.
The State Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Earlier this month, Khalilzad announced the release of another American citizen, George Glezmann, who worked as a Delta Air Lines mechanic and had been detained for two years for unknown reasons. Khalilzad called Glezmann’s release a “goodwill gesture” from the Taliban to Trump and the American people and praised Trump for making “the freedom and homecoming of Americans held abroad a high priority.”
In January, President Joe Biden secured the release of two other Americans, Ryan Corbett and William W. McKenty III, who were let go as the Taliban announced a prisoner swap between the U.S. and Afghanistan and after what Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, called “intense behind-the-scenes efforts by U.S. officials.”
The Taliban at the time identified one freed Afghan prisoner, Khan Mohammed, who it said was arrested in the Afghan province of Nangarhar nearly two decades ago and was serving a life sentence in California.
Corbett, a father from New York, ran a social enterprise organization that worked with NGOs to help Afghan citizens start their own businesses. He was detained by the Taliban for nearly two and a half years, according to his family, who say they suspect he was taken into custody to be used as political leverage.
Last year, members of Congress called for the release of U.S. citizen and civil aviation engineer Mahmood Habibi, who they said “was wrongfully detained by the Taliban.” In a House resolution, officials said Habibi was arrested in August 2022 because the Taliban “made an assumption” that his employer — a Kabul-based telecommunications company — “might have been involved” in a U.S. drone strike on Kabul that killed an al-Qaeda leader.
Habibi has yet to be released. In August, the FBI made a public request for any further information about his disappearance.