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Taliban free last American hostage in Afghanistan

The Taliban on Monday freed Mark Frerichs, the only American hostage remaining in Afghanistan, in exchange for a Taliban drug lord, Bashir Noorzai, who was serving a life sentence at a US prison.

Frerichs, the 60-year-old American engineer and a Navy veteran, was abducted in Kabul in early 2020 when the US and NATO troops were battling the then Taliban insurgency. Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi told reporters in Kabul that the prisoner swap between his government and a US delegation took place at the Kabul airport.