JAKARTA - United States President Joe Biden on Sunday called on Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to free a US civil engineer kidnapped two years ago, believed to be the last American hostage held by the Taliban.
Mark Frerichs, a 59-year-old US Navy veteran from Lombard, Illinois, who worked in Afghanistan for a decade on development projects. He was kidnapped a month before a US troop withdrawal deal in February 2020 was signed, transferred to the Haqqani network, a brutal Taliban faction accused of carrying out some of the war's deadliest attacks.
To note, this Monday marks the two years Frerichs has been under the Taliban hostage.
"Threatening the safety of Americans or innocent civilians is always unacceptable, and taking hostage-taking is an act of certain cruelty and cowardice," Biden said in a statement.
"The Taliban must immediately release Mark before it can expect consideration of his aspirations for legitimacy. This is non-negotiable," he stressed.
President Biden pulled US troops out of Afghanistan in August last year, in a chaotic withdrawal that drew sharp criticism from his Republican and Democratic supporters, as well as foreign allies and pierced his approval rating.
Meanwhile, the Frerichs family have criticized the US government for not pressing harder to secure his release. Last week, his sister, Charlene Cakora, made a personal plea to Biden in a Washington Post opinion piece titled, "President Biden, please bring back my brother, the last American held hostage in Afghanistan."
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To note, the United States has raised Frerich's case in every meeting with the Taliban, the State Department said in a statement. "We ask the Taliban to release him. We will continue to work to bring him home," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted.
US and Taliban officials met for the first time since the withdrawal in October in Doha, Qatar, which has hosted talks in Afghanistan leading to a troop withdrawal.
The emir of Qatar will visit the White House on Monday to discuss issues that will include global energy security, the White House said last week.
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