Afghanistan Peace CampaignAmerican Dennis Coyle, who the Taliban released on Tuesday after more than a year in detention, said the people of Afghanistan are “not all evil.”
“People live life daily on the streets, doing their best to make do. So, there are not all evil, wicked people there,” he reflected in an interview with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo, while on his flight back to the U.S. “Many people just doing their best to survive, looking for hope.”
Coyle was detained in January 2025 without charges by the Taliban General Directorate of Intelligence, according to a website run by his family. At the time, he was “legally working to support Afghan language communities as an academic researcher,” the family said.
The release came less than three weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Afghanistan as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” and urged the Taliban to release Coyle and 38-year-old Mahmood Habibi, also a U.S. citizen.
Coyle’s family wrote in a statement Tuesday that their “hearts are filled with overwhelming gratitude and praise to God” for his return home. They also thanked Rubio, President Trump, senior director for counterterrorism Sebastian Gorka, special envoy for hostage response Adam Boehler and Julia Speer.
Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday that Coyle was released out of “humanitarian compassion and goodwill.”
“The esteemed authority of the Supreme Court deemed his prior imprisonment sufficient, and today he was handed over to his family in Kabul,” the ministry wrote on social platform X.
Coyle also told NewsNation he was “very thankful to be going back to my homeland.”
“I’m very proud to be an American,” he said. “There’s a Pashto proverb that says, ‘To every person their homeland is like Kashmir,’ which means it’s special. So I love my country. But yet, God has given me a love for Afghans also.”
“And while there’s much joy coming home, much of my life, the last 20 years, has been invested there,” Coyle continued. “And there’s some, what’s the right word, regret not, but even a hint of sadness that way, with much, of course, joy.”
Rubio celebrated Coyle’s release in a Tuesday statement, but called on the Taliban to release Habibi, Paul Overby Jr. and “all other unjustly detained Americans.
Habibi, who was born in Afghanistan, was abducted alongside his driver by the Taliban’s General Dicterorate of Intelligence in August 2022.
Overby, a writer, disappeared in Khost Province, Afghanistan, in May 2014, according to the FBI. The bureau is offering up to $5 million for information leading to his location, recovery and return.