Chicago-Area Man Freed by Taliban in Exchange for Afghan Drug Lord, Family Says
Other Taliban officials claimed Noorzai was held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay but did not offer any support for that claim and a U.S. official said that this was not the case. Noorzai was prosecuted by the Justice Department, which does not send its defendants to the military prison at Cuba, and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009 on drug trafficking charges.
Eric Lebson, a former U.S. government national security official who had been advising Frerichs' family, said in a statement that “everything about this case has been an uphill fight.” He criticized the Trump administration for having given away"our leverage to get Mark home quickly by signing a peace accord with the Taliban without ever having asked them to return Mark first.
But his name surfaced last month when President Joe Biden, who had publicly called for Frerichs' release, was said by his advisers to have pressed officials to consider any risk posed to Frerichs by the drone strike in Afghanistan that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri. “This act shows us that all problems can be solved through talks and I thank both sides' teams who worked so hard for this to happen,” he added.
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