Taliban Deny They’re Holding US Contractor

Taliban officials say that Mark R. Frerichs, a US contractor who was last seen in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost Province in late January, is not in their custody. “We don’t have any information about the missing American,” the Associated Press on Sunday quoted Sohail Shaheen, the Islamist group’s political spokesman, as saying. US officials have been cited in the past as stating that Frerichs, a navy veteran, had been abducted by the so-called Haqqani network, a Taliban ally placed on the list of terrorist organizations by the Obama administration in 2012. The Taliban denial is said to cover the Haqqani network as well. The US and the Taliban signed an agreement in early March pledging to reduce violence in Afghanistan as a way to start peace talks. Since then, there have been several attacks attributed to the Islamists, who have criticized Afghani President Ashraf Ghani for dragging his feet on prisoner swaps, which was mentioned in the deal. US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who oversaw the agreement, specifically demanded Frerichs’s release during talks last week with Taliban political leaders in Doha, Qatar. The FBI has now issued a poster seeking information as to Frerichs’s whereabouts.