President Joe Biden is demanding the release of Navy veteran Mark Frerichs on the second anniversary of him being taken hostage in Afghanistan by the Taliban and their affiliates.
Frerichs, a civil engineer and retired Navy diver from Illinois, was taken hostage at the end of January 2020, at about the time then-President Donald Trump’s administration signed the U.S.-Taliban peace deal that set the stage for the eventual withdrawal. He had been working in Afghanistan as a contractor for 10 years and is the only known U.S. hostage being held by the Taliban.
“Threatening the safety of Americans or any innocent civilians is always unacceptable, and hostage-taking is an act of particular cruelty and cowardice,” Biden said in a statement, before mentioning their desire to obtain international legitimacy as the Afghan government.
STATE DEPARTMENT: TALIBAN INFORMATION-SHARING DID NOT ‘EXPOSE ANYONE TO ADDITIONAL RISK’
“The Taliban must immediately release Mark before it can expect any consideration of its aspirations for legitimacy,” the president added. “This is not negotiable.“
The United States has brought up Frerichs “in every meeting with the Taliban,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement, though he too called Frerichs’s release “among our core, non-negotiable priorities.”
His kidnappers are believed to be members of the Haqqani network, a Taliban-tied group that was designated a terrorist organization by the State Department nearly a decade ago. Members of the group are among the Taliban government that was set up in August after they overthrew the U.S.-backed government in the final days of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan after nearly 20 years.
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The Taliban is willing to free Frerichs if the U.S. releases Bashir Noorzai, an Afghan drug lord serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison for smuggling $50 million of heroin into the country, according to Foreign Policy. He was arrested on drug trafficking charges in 2005 and has been serving two concurrent life sentences since 2009.
Charlene Cakora, Frerichs’s sister, issued a statement saying that her family is “grateful” for Biden’s comments but added, “What we really want is to have Mark home.”
