US and Taliban are negotiating a detainee swap, according to the WSJ

The Wall Street Journal said Tuesday that the Biden administration is in talks with Afghanistan to swap at least one well-known prisoner in Guantanamo Bay who is suspected of having connections to former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for Americans who are now being imprisoned there.

A request for comment on the story was not immediately answered by White House and U.S. State Department representatives. Additionally, Afghan Taliban representatives did not immediately reply.

According to the WSJ, the government of U.S. President Joe Biden is requesting the repatriation of three Americans who were apprehended in 2022: Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann, and Mahmood Habibi, in return for Muhammad Rahim al-Afghani.

A year after the Taliban took control of Kabul after a tumultuous U.S. retreat, Corbett and Habibi were arrested in different instances in August 2022. Later in 2022, Glezmann was arrested while on a tourist visit.

Afghani is an Afghan guy who was sent from CIA custody to Guantanamo in 2008 and is characterized as a high-level al Qaeda operative.

According to the WSJ, which quoted people who were present at a confidential meeting with White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan last month, the negotiations have been underway since July.

According to the story, Biden’s government transported 11 Guantanamo detainees to Oman on Monday, cutting the number of inmates in the Cuban detention site in half as the president gets ready to step down on January 20.