Adam Berer, the special presidential envoy on the US hostages issue, negotiated the release of Fay Hall with the help of Qatari officials.
Last month, a US citizen who was detained by the Afghan Taliban said she was released on March 29th.
“I’m happy you’re the president. Thank you for taking me home,” she said in a video Trump shared on his true social platform. “I have never been proud to be an American citizen. Thank you, President. God bless you.”
“And I want you to know, all the women in prisons in Afghanistan, they always say, ‘When will Trump come?’ Really, they treat you like their savior.
US officials said Adam Berer, the envoy of Trump’s special president for hostage issues, along with Qatari officials and others, negotiated the release of Hall. She was charged with fraudulent drone use.
Hall was released on March 27 by court order, sources said. She was accepted at the Qatar Embassy in Kabul and was confirmed to be healthy after undergoing medical checks.
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Hall was arrested in February along with a British couple who had been running a project at an Afghan school for 18 years and decided to stay in 2021 after the Taliban came to power.
The family of Barbie and Peter Reynolds, a couple in the ’70s, have called for the release of the couple amid concerns about their health, British media reports.
Hall was released after the Taliban lifted the bounty of three senior Taliban officials, including Home Minister Sirajuddin Hakkani, announced on March 23.
Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Kani has named two other officials Abdul Aziz Hakkani and Yahiya Hakkani.
Hakkani, who admitted to planning a January 2008 attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul in January 2008, killed six people, including US citizen Thor David Hesla, but has stopped appearing on the State Department’s Justice website. He has been under UN sanctions since 2007 due to his involvement with the network founded by his father, Jalardin.
Zakir Jallallie, a civil servant at the Afghanistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the action indicates that both parties are “introducing constructive measures to open the path to progress beyond the impact of the wartime stage.”
“The recent developments in Afghanistan and US relations are a good example of a practical and realistic engagement between the two governments,” he said.
The official Taliban Shafi Azam called this development the beginning of normalization.
The Hakkani Network has grown into one of the Taliban’s deadliest weapons after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The group employed roadside bombs, suicide bombings and other attacks, including embassies in India and the US, the Afghan presidency and other major targets.
The Taliban faces widespread condemnation of their authoritarianism, particularly bans affecting women and girls. Hakkani opposed the Taliban decision-making process and alienation of the Afghan people’s segment.
For the past year, Hakkanis have been permitted by the United Nations to travel. This allowed them to meet Saudi Arabia with the country’s leaders for pilgrimage, including the United Arab Emirates. These were his first trips abroad since the Taliban acquisition.
Hall is the 39 unfairly detained Americans who have been released since the president entered the White House on January 20th.
Several Americans remain in detention in Afghanistan.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to the report.
