EXCLUSIVE: A woman desperate to bring her husband home after two and a half years of wrongful detention in Afghanistan has flown to Mar-a-Lago, Florida, to plead President-elect Trump to take up her case.
Ryan Corbett was captured by the Taliban in Afghanistan in August 2022, just as the US was withdrawing from the country, and Anna Corbett says she has been trying to meet with the Biden administration ever since.
This week, Anna saw a glimmer of hope as reports emerged that the Biden administration has negotiated with the Taliban to trade three U.S. citizens held in Afghanistan in exchange for a Guantanamo Bay prisoner is said to have been a close associate of Osama bin Laden.
But that deal appears to have stalled. A senior Taliban official told The Guardian that the Taliban would rather wait to negotiate with the new Trump administration, dashing the Corbett family’s hopes.
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“I’m absolutely desperate to fight for my family,” Anna Corbett told Fox News Digital Friday during a layover on her last-minute flight to Mar-a-Lago.
She’s not sure if the last ditch effort will work. The Trump team has not yet organized a meeting.
The Corbett family before Ryan Corbett’s 2022 arrest in Afghanistan. (Anna Corbett)
“Wouldn’t it be great if I had a meeting in one day, while I spent 883 days trying to get a meeting with President Biden, and he didn’t have time?” she said.
Trump told Fox News’ Peter Doocy that he would consider a prisoner swap but seemed skeptical.
“I haven’t looked at it,” Trump said Thursday. “I’m not in favor of the trade, but I’ll take a look at it tomorrow. We’ll announce something tomorrow.”
The talks, which have been ongoing since July 2024, include the exchange of suspected senior al-Qaeda operative Muhammad Rahim al Afghani for US citizens Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmoud Habibi, held in Afghanistan in 2022.
The Corbett family has traveled to Washington, D.C. dozens of times to meet with officials about bringing Ryan Corbett home. (Anna Corbett)
Some Republicans in Congress privately expressed national security concerns about Rahim’s return to the Taliban and questioned whether the negotiations had resulted in a bad deal.
“Ryan is a wonderful person, and he has done nothing wrong, and our family needs him desperately,” Anna Corbett said, pleading with the US government to accept the deal. ‘He’s a patriot. He was just trying to help the Afghan people, and this is a decision for the president to make. And we desperately want Ryan to come home alive as soon as possible.”
Glezmann and Ryan Corbett have been declared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as wrongfully detained, and the Taliban denies holding Habibi.
Anna Corbett said she spoke to her husband for about 15 minutes on Christmas Day.
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“He obviously went out of his way to be in a good mood for the kids and me at Christmas,” she said. ‘But of course it was a difficult decision because this has been going on for so long.
“He asked me how things were going, if there was any progress. And there was really nothing I could share with him.”
Anna Corbett at the airport on her way to Mar-a-Lago in Florida Friday. (Anna Corbett)
In 2024, two released American prisoners revealed that Ryan Corbett was severely malnourished, suffered blackouts and fainting spells, and was kept in a basement cell with almost no sunlight or exercise.
Anna Corbett said her husband has since gained some weight but still suffers from constant headaches and tinnitus.
Ryan Corbett was kidnapped on August 10, 2022, after returning to Afghanistan, where he and his family had lived a year earlier during the collapse of the US-backed government.
He arrived in Afghanistan on a valid 12-month visa to pay and train staff as part of a business venture he led aimed at promoting Afghanistan’s private sector through consultancy services and loans.
Despite the arrests, the US remains the most important Afghanistan’s largest financial supportafter offering the nation about $3 billion since its withdrawal in 2021.
The Taliban have long sought the release of Rahim, who has been held at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba since 2008 because the Pentagon believes he was a close ally of bin Laden.
In November 2023, the Guantánamo Bay Prison Review Board cited Rahim’s work for senior al-Qaeda members and his participation in attacks on American and allied forces in Afghanistan as a reason to keep him in custody.
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Biden has been planning to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for some time. On Monday, he announced the transfer of 11 Yemeni prisoners, including two former bin Laden bodyguards, from Guantanamo to Oman, which has agreed to help resettle them.
Greg Norman of Fox News and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
