U.S. veteran and civilian contractor Mark Frerichs has been freed by Taliban after more than two years in Afghanistan, his family said. His release appears to have been part of a swap including a Taliban drug lord freed from American custody.
In Afghanistan, Noorzai told reporters at a press conference that he had been released from an unspecified U.S. prison and handed over earlier in the day to the Taliban in Kabul, in exchange for an American prisoner held in Afghanistan whom he did not identify.
Frerichs, abducted on Jan. 31, 2020, was last seen in a video distributed earlier this year, pleading for his release so that he can be reunited with his family, according to a recording posted by The New Yorker magazine at the time. Videos of hostages are sometimes released to show proof that they are alive and to facilitate negotiations for a release, though it was not immediately clear if that was the case here. The New Yorker said it obtained the clip from an unidentified individual in Afghanistan.
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