WASHINGTON: The Biden administration is negotiating with Afghanistan to exchange Americans detained in the country for at least one high-profile prisoner held in Guantanamo Bay with alleged ties to former Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Representatives of the White House and the US State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the report. Representatives for the Afghan Taliban also did not immediately respond.
US President Joe Biden’s administration is seeking the return of three Americans seized in 2022 — Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmood Habibi — in exchange for Muhammad Rahim Al-Afghani, the WSJ reported.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed to Reuters that the Biden administration has been negotiating with the Taliban since at least July on a US proposal to exchange Corbett, Glezmann and Habibi for Rahim.
The Taliban, who deny holding Habibi, countered with an offer to exchange Glezmann and Corbett for Rahim and two others, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Corbett and Habibi were detained in separate incidents in August 2022 a year after the Taliban seized Kabul amid the chaotic US troop withdrawal. Glezmann was detained later in 2022 while visiting as a tourist.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council said they could not confirm the WSJ story, but added that the administration was “working around the clock” to secure the release of the three Americans.
Rahim’s lawyer, James Connell, told Reuters that neither the Biden administration nor the Taliban had informed him or Rahim of the negotiations.
“It does seem important to include Rahim or his representative in the conversation,” said Connell. “As it happens, he is willing to be traded or exchanged.”
Rahim was “the last person brought into the CIA torture program,” said Connell, referring to an agency program instituted after the Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks that used harsh interrogation methods on suspected Islamist militants.
The CIA denies the methods amounted to torture.
A Senate intelligence committee report on the agency’s so-called enhanced interrogation program called Rahim an “Al Qaeda facilitator” and said that he was arrested in Pakistan in June 2007 and “rendered” to the CIA the following month.
He was kept in a secret CIA “black site,” where he was subjected to tough interrogation methods, including extensive sleep deprivation, and then sent to Guantanamo Bay in March 2008, the report said.
The US-Taliban talks have been in motion since July, according to the WSJ, which cited sources who attended a classified House Foreign Affairs Committee briefing last month with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
On Monday, Biden’s administration sent 11 Guantanamo detainees to Oman, reducing the prisoner population at the detention center in Cuba by nearly half as part of its effort to close the facility as the president prepares to leave office Jan. 20.
 

LOS ANGELES: A rapidly growing wildfire raged across an upscale section of Los Angeles on Tuesday, destroying homes and creating traffic jams as 30,000 people evacuated beneath huge plumes of smoke that covered much of the metropolitan area.
At least 2,921 acres (1,182 hectares) of the Pacific Palisades area between the coastal settlements of Santa Monica and Malibu had burned, officials said, after they had already warned of extreme fire danger from powerful winds that arrived following extended dry weather.
The fire spread as officials warned the worst wind conditions were expected to come overnight, leading to concerns that more neighborhoods could be forced to flee. The city of Santa Monica later ordered evacuations in the northern fringe of town.
Witnesses reported a number homes on fire with flames nearly scorching their cars when people fled the hills of Topanga Canyon, as the fire spread from there down to the Pacific Ocean.
“We feel very blessed at this point that there’s no injuries that are reported,” Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley told a press conference, adding that more than 25,000 people in 10,000 homes were threatened.
Firefighters in aircraft scooped water from the sea to drop it on the nearby flames. Flames engulfed homes and bulldozers cleared abandoned vehicles from roads so emergency vehicles could pass, television images showed.
As the sun set over Los Angeles, towering orange flames illuminated the hills leading to Topanga Canyon.
The fire singed some trees on the grounds of the Getty Villa, a museum loaded with priceless works of art, but the collection remained safe largely because of preventive efforts to trim brush surrounding the buildings, the museum said.
With only one major road leading from the canyon to the coast, and only one coastal highway leading to safety, traffic crawled to a halt, leading people to flee on foot.
Cindy Festa, a Pacific Palisades resident, said that as she evacuated out of the canyon, fires were “this close to the cars,” demonstrating with her thumb and forefinger.
“People left their cars on Palisades Drive. Burning up the hillside. The palm trees — everything is going,” Festa said from her car.
Before the fire started, the National Weather Service had issued its highest alert for extreme fire conditions for much of Los Angeles County from Tuesday through Thursday, predicting wind gusts of 50 to 80 mph (80 to 130 kph).
With low humidity and dry vegetation due to a lack of rain, the conditions were “about as bad as it gets in terms of fire weather,” the Los Angeles office of the National Weather Service said on X.
Governor Gavin Newsom, who declared a state of emergency, said the state positioned personnel, firetrucks and aircraft elsewhere in Southern California because of the fire danger to the wider region, he added.
“Hopefully, we’re wrong, but we’re anticipating other fires happening concurrently,” Newsom told the press conference.
A second blaze dubbed the Eaton Fire later broke out some 30 miles (50 km) inland in the foothills above Pasadena, consuming 200 acres (80 hectares), Cal Fire said.
The powerful winds changed President Joe Biden’s travel plans, grounding Air Force One in Los Angeles. He had planned to make a short flight inland to the Coachella Valley for a ceremony to create two new national monuments in California but the event was rescheduled for a later date at the White House.
“I have offered any federal assistance that is needed to help suppress the terrible Pacific Palisades fire,” Biden said in statement. A federal grant had already been approved to help reimburse the state of California for its fire response, Biden said.
Pacific Palisades is home to several Hollywood stars. Actor James Woods said on X he was able to evacuate but added, “I do not know at this moment if our home is still standing.”
Actor Steve Guttenberg told KTLA television that friends of his were impeded from evacuating because others had abandoned their cars in the road.
“It’s really important for everybody to band together and don’t worry about your personal property. Just get out,” Guttenberg said. “Get your loved ones and get out.”