There could be more American prisoners in Afghanistan than expected. The US Secretary of State threatened the Taliban on social networks.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened on Sunday night to list rewards for the capture of the leaders of the Afghan government movement, the Taliban. Rubio responded to information that several American citizens could still be in Afghanistan after Monday’s prisoner exchange between the US and the Taliban. TASR writes according to the AFP agency.
“I just learned that the Taliban are holding more American hostages than we thought,” Rubio wrote on social network X. “If this is true, we will immediately have to put a very high bounty on their top leaders, possibly even bigger than (Osama ) bin Laden,” he said, referring to the leader of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, who was killed by US forces in 2011.
AFP recalls that the reward for the capture of bin Laden was announced at 25 million dollars, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could additionally decide on the payment of another 25 million. According to available information, no one picked it up after he was killed.
Rubio did not say who the other detained Americans might be. However, according to AFP, there have been reports of missing American citizens in Afghanistan for a long time, whose cases are not officially registered by Washington. Monday’s prisoner swap, which took place in the final hours of President Joe Biden’s term, was several years in the making. Two American citizens who were detained by the Taliban after taking power in the country were released on Monday in exchange for Taliban fighter Khan Mohammed, who was convicted in the US in 2008 for drug trafficking.
