WASHINGTON. – As a crowd looked on, uniformed Taliban surrounded the Toyota Land Cruiser in which Mahmood Habibi, a naturalized US citizen, sat. Other Taliban smashed open the door of his Kabul apartment, emerging later with his laptop and papers.
Blindfolded in the back seat, Habibi and his driver were driven off by gunmen sporting shoulder patches of the Taliban’s feared secret police, the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), according to several witness statements in US government possession seen by Reuters.
Afghanistan’s Taliban government denies it detained Habibi, 37, who was a former head of Afghanistan’s civil aviation. While dividing his time between the United States and Kabul working for a private company, he became a US citizen after the Taliban took power in 2021. The Taliban also says they have no knowledge of his whereabouts, three years after he disappeared.
That is contradicted by the witness accounts and other evidence, including data monitored from Habibi’s cellphone, described to Reuters by a US official and a former US official familiar with the matter.
The Taliban denials present a conundrum for the FBI, which is leading the US government effort to gain his release, and for the State Department, which describes Habibi’s detention as a major impediment to exploring increased engagement with Afghanistan, three years after his August 10, 2022 arrest.
US President Donald Trump has made freeing Americans held abroad a top priority and already has secured the release of dozens, including those from Afghanistan, Russia and Venezuela.
The case of Habibi – the only publicly identified American held in the country – has been harder to resolve.
This story is the most comprehensive account to date of the circumstances of Habibi’s capture and includes previously unreported details.
Among them, interviews with a US official and a former US official with knowledge of the case reveal that the Taliban likely detained Habibi because the CIA had penetrated the company where he worked. The sources say the US spy agency had accessed one of the company’s security cameras, helping it pinpoint the al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul guesthouse.
Habibi’s detention came 10 days after Zawahiri – the last of the top plotters of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States – was dramatically assassinated by a US drone strike on the guesthouse, ordered by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.
At the time, US officials briefed journalists that it was a CIA operation. The US sources told Reuters that Habibi was unaware of the CIA plot and was wrongly detained after returning to Kabul from a work trip to Dubai after the assassination, oblivious of the danger he was in.
The CIA, the Taliban, the White House and Habibi’s employer, Virginia-based ARX Communications, did not respond to detailed requests for comment for this story. ARX has previously said neither it nor its subsidiaries were involved with the strike on Zawahiri. Reuters could not independently verify whether Habibi was or wasn’t aware of the plot.
In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesperson called for Habibi’s immediate release.
“We know the Taliban abducted Mahmood Habibi nearly three years ago,” the spokesperson said.
A co-worker detained with Habibi, then later released, saw him in GDI headquarters and heard him in an adjacent room being asked if he worked for the CIA or was involved in the strike on Zawahiri, according to one of the statements in US government possession, seen by Reuters.
Then, in June and August of 2023, the US government detected that his mobile phone had been switched on in GDI headquarters, the US official and former official said.
Reuters could not reach the witnesses who made statements, including the coworker, or verify the accuracy of their account of Habibi’s detention. The US official familiar with the matter said excerpts of the statements have been presented to the Taliban in response to their repeated denials of Habibi’s detention.
As Habibi and his family on Sunday mark the third anniversary of his arrest, the Trump administration has stepped up efforts to win his release, including offering a $5 million reward for information. But so far, he appears no closer to freedom, the U.S. sources said.
