Wife of American captured in Afghanistan heads to Mar-a-Lago to plead with Trump to accept prisoner swap
EXCLUSIVE: A wife desperate to bring her husband home after 2 1/2 years of illegal detention in Afghanistan has flown to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to plead President-elect Trump take on her case.
Ryan Corbett was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan in August 2022 just as the US was withdrawing from the country, and Anna Corbett says she has been trying to get a meeting with the Biden administration ever since.
Anna saw a glimmer of hope this week when reports surfaced that the Biden administration was negotiating with the Taliban to exchange three American citizens held in Afghanistan in exchange for Guantanamo Bay prisoner he was allegedly a close associate of Osama bin Laden.
However, that agreement is apparently at a standstill. A senior Taliban official told The Guardian that the Taliban would prefer to wait to negotiate with the incoming Trump administration, dashing the hopes of the Corbett family.
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“I’m absolutely desperate to fight for my family,” Anna Corbett told Fox News Digital Friday during a layover on her last flight to Mar-a-Lago.
She is not sure if the last attempt will succeed. Trump’s team has not yet arranged a meeting.
The Corbett family before the detention of Ryan Corbett in Afghanistan in 2022. (Anna Corbett)
“Wouldn’t it be amazing if I got a meeting in one day, when I’ve been trying to get a meeting with President Biden for 883 days and he didn’t have time?” she said.
Trump told Fox News reporter Peter Doocy that he would consider a prisoner swap, but seemed skeptical.
“I haven’t looked at it,” Trump said Thursday. “I wasn’t in favor of a trade, but I’ll have a look tomorrow. We’ll announce something tomorrow.”
The negotiations, which last at least July 2024, include the exchange of suspected senior al-Qaeda aide Muhammad Rahim al-Afgani for US citizens Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmoud Habibi, who were detained in Afghanistan in 2022.
The Corbett family traveled to Washington, DC, dozens of times to meet with officials about bringing Ryan Corbett home. (Anna Corbett)
Some Republicans in Congress have privately expressed national security concerns about returning Rahim to the Taliban and questioned whether the negotiations resulted in a bad deal.
“Ryan is an amazing person and he has done nothing wrong and our family desperately needs him,” said Anna Corbett, pleading with the US government to accept the deal. “He’s a patriot. He was just trying to help the Afghan people, and this is a decision for the president to make. And we just desperately want Ryan to come home as soon as possible.”
Glezmann and Ryan Corbett were announced State Department as unjustly detained, and the Taliban deny holding Habibi.
Anna Corbett said she last spoke to her husband on Christmas Day for about 15 minutes.
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“He obviously tried very hard to be in a good mood at Christmas for the kids and me,” she said. “But it was obviously a tough call, because this has been going on for so long.
“He asked me where things were, if there was any progress. And I really had nothing to share with him.”
Anna Corbett at the airport on her way to Mar-a-Lago in Florida on Friday. (Anna Corbett)
In 2024, two released American prisoners discovered that Ryan Corbett was severely malnourished, passing out and passing out, and kept in a basement cell with almost no sunlight or exercise.
Anna Corbett said her husband has put on a little weight since then but still has constant headaches and ringing in his ears.
Ryan Corbett was kidnapped on August 10, 2022, after returning to Afghanistan, where he and his family had been living during the fall of the US-backed government there a year earlier.
He arrived in Afghanistan on a valid 12-month visa to pay and train staff as part of a business venture he ran to promote Afghanistan’s private sector through advisory services and lending.
Despite the detentions, the US is still the largest financial support to Afghanistanoffering the nation about $3 billion from withdrawal in 2021.
The Taliban have long sought the release of Rahim, who has been held at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba since 2008 because the Pentagon believes he was a close associate of bin Laden.
In November 2023, the Guantánamo Bay prison review board cited Rahim’s work for senior members of Al Qaeda and his involvement in attacks on US and allied forces in Afghanistan as reasons for detention.
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Biden has long intended to close Guantánamo. On Monday, he announced the transfer of 11 Yemeni prisoners, including two former bin Laden bodyguards, from Guantanamo to Oman, which has agreed to help relocate them.
Greg Norman of Fox News and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
