Afghanistan: Taliban frees American engineer Mark Frerichs

New Delhi: The Taliban have freed an American engineer in exchange for an Afghan tribal leader linked to the group whom the US had held on drugs charges since 2005. Mark Frerichs was exchanged at Kabul airport for Bashir Noorzai, the acting Taliban foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, told a news conference in the Afghan capital.

Noorzai was detained by the US on suspicion of smuggling more than $ 50m worth of heroin into the US and Europe. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is ready to solve problems by negotiation with all including the United States,” Muttaqi said, referring to the Taliban.

Frerichs is an engineer and US navy veteran from Lombard, Illinois, who worked in Afghanistan for a decade on development projects. He was abducted in February 2020. The US has no official representation in Afghanistan and US government officials elsewhere were not immediately available for comment.

Washington has been pushing for the release of Frerichs, including after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, as US-led foreign forces were withdrawing. No foreign government has formally recognized the Taliban, in part because the group restricted most girls from education.

Noorzai briefly addressed the news conference at a Kabul hotel, alongside Muttaqi and the Taliban’s acting deputy prime ministers. “I am proud to be in the capital of my country among my brothers,” he said. The tribal leader had longstanding ties to the Taliban.

(Vinayak)