Wife of detained American pleads with Biden to step up pressure on Taliban
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Anna Corbett, the wife of Ryan Corbett, an American detained in Afghanistan since August 2022, is marking their 20th wedding anniversary Monday by publicly pleading with the Biden administration to step up work to convince the Taliban to release him.
“I am begging the administration to focus on bringing Ryan home as soon as possible before his health deteriorates completely and there’s irreversible physical, emotional damage,” Anna Corbett told Semafor in an interview.
She criticized the administration, saying the recent release of two former Guantanamo Bay prisoners from house arrest in Oman to Afghanistan shouldn’t have been allowed without some concessions on her husband’s case.
“What’s difficult is that not only is there not movement forward with Ryan but it seems that leverage is being given up that could be used to bring Ryan home,” Anna Corbett said.
The White House didn’t return a request for comment.
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Anna Corbett said she has spoken to her husband three times since his detention by the Taliban — including a six-minute phone call on Christmas Day. The Qatari government also visited him on the same day, she said, after which she received a photo of her husband looking much thinner than when he was arrested.
“I am very concerned,” Anna Corbett said, “increasingly so, of Ryan’s health.”
Anna Corbett has met with Biden administration officials about her husband’s case, including White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in January. She said she was grateful of the meeting but that Sullivan could not provide specifics about next steps (which is usual practice for wrongful detention cases).
There have also been recent stray reports about a prisoner swap involving Ryan Corbett, but a spokesman for the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs called those inaccurate.
Ryan Corbett, who was involved in NGO projects in Afghanistan, was evacuated along with his family in August 2021 when the Afghan government collapsed. He traveled twice to Afghanistan the following year as he sought to keep his consultancy alive despite Taliban rule, and was arrested on the second trip in August 2022. Ryan Corbett was classified as wrongfully detained last year, around the time his case became public knowledge.
Ryan Corbett’s case has attracted bipartisan advocacy on Capitol Hill, where a House resolution calling for his immediate release that is sponsored by Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., who represents the district where the Corbetts now live, has gained 67 cosponsors.
