The Taliban on Thursday released George Glezmann, an American held since 2022 in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
Mr. Glezmann, an Atlanta native, was a Delta Air Lines mechanic who was detained while visiting Afghanistan as a tourist in December 2022. The State Department had officially designated him a wrongful detainee.
Mr. Glezmann boarded a Qatari aircraft in Kabul, the Afghan capital, to fly to Doha, Qatar, with U.S. and Qatari officials on Thursday. Qatar maintains close ties with the ruling Taliban government in Afghanistan and has hosted talks between it and U.S. officials. Negotiations between the first Trump administration and Taliban insurgents for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan occurred in Doha.
In his announcement of Mr. Glezmann’s release, Mr. Rubio thanked the Qatari government for its help. Adam Boehler, who had been President Trump’s pick for special envoy for hostage affairs, took part in the negotiations with the Taliban.
The meeting in Kabul between American and Taliban officials was the first known in-person contact of any significance between the two governments since Mr. Trump took office in January. Mr. Boehler was accompanied on the trip by Zalmay Khalilzad, the special envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation in the first Trump administration and a former ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations.
Mr. Boehler arrived at the meeting in Kabul dressed in a gray jacket, black sweater and black baseball cap. Mr. Khalilzad wore a navy suit and purple-and-red floral tie. They sat at a wooden table across from Amir Khan Muttaqi, the foreign minister of Afghanistan, and other Afghan officials, photographs of the meeting showed.
The Taliban toppled a U.S.-backed Afghan government in August 2021 and returned to power after President Joseph R. Biden Jr. executed the troop withdrawal that Mr. Trump had negotiated in his first term. The United States does not have diplomatic relations with the Taliban and has imposed sanctions on its officials. Moderate Taliban officials are seeking to normalize relations with the United States.
The United States does not maintain a presence in Kabul, unlike European countries, which have been more successful in negotiating releases of their citizens with the Taliban.
Mr. Rubio said on Thursday that Mr. Glezmann’s release was “also a reminder that other Americans are still detained in Afghanistan.”
The State Department said it was still seeking the return of six American detainees in Afghanistan and the remains of one U.S. citizen. The agency has not labeled them wrongfully detained, although one State Department official said the Americans were unjustly detained.
A wrongful detention designation means the U.S. government tries to prioritize freeing that citizen.
The department has focused on Mahmood Shah Habibi, an Afghan American businessman who was taken from his vehicle near his home in Kabul in August 2022, according to an F.B.I. report. Mr. Habibi worked for the Asia Consultancy Group, a telecommunications company based in Kabul.
The Taliban government released two Americans, Ryan Corbett and William Wallace McKenty, in late January in a prisoner swap arranged by the Biden administration. U.S. officials released Khan Mohammed, a member of the Taliban who had been imprisoned for life in California on charges of drug trafficking and terrorism. Mr. Biden gave a conditional commutation to Mr. Mohammed before he left office.
Christina Goldbaum contributed reporting from Damascus, Syria.
