WASHINGTON, United States: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday he has designated Afghanistan as a \u201cState Sponsor of Wrongful Detention,\u201d demanding Taliban authorities release two Americans and commit to ending its \u201chostage diplomacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The move comes just over a week after Iran became the first country added to Washington\u2019s new \u201cwrongful detention\u201d blacklist.<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump in September signed an executive order that created the blacklist, similar to designations by the United States on terrorism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Taliban continues to use terrorist tactics, kidnapping individuals for ransom or to seek policy concessions,\u201d Rubio said in a statement.<\/p>\n
He said it was \u201cnot safe for Americans to travel to Afghanistan because the Taliban continues to unjustly detain our fellow Americans and other foreign nationals.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Taliban needs to release Dennis Coyle, Mahmoud Habibi, and all Americans unjustly detained in Afghanistan now and commit to cease the practice of hostage diplomacy forever,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Habibi, an Afghan-American businessman, previously served as Afghanistan\u2019s director of civil aviation.<\/p>\n
He was arrested in August 2022 in Kabul along with dozens of other employees of his telecommunications company, according to US authorities.<\/p>\n
The State Department has issued a reward of $5 million for information leading to Habibi\u2019s return.<\/p>\n
Coyle is an academic from Colorado who worked for two decades in Afghanistan before being detained in January 2025, according to the James Foley Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON, United States: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Monday he has designated Afghanistan as a \u201cState Sponsor of Wrongful Detention,\u201d demanding Taliban authorities release two Americans and commit to ending its \u201chostage diplomacy.\u201d The move comes just over a week after Iran became the first country added to Washington\u2019s new \u201cwrongful detention\u201d blacklist. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94870"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94882,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94870\/revisions\/94882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}