The United States may place a bounty on the top leaders of the Taliban, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on January 25 after finding out that the group may be holding more American hostages in Afghanistan.
"Just hearing the Taliban is holding more American hostages than has been reported," Rubio said on X.
"If this is true, we will have to immediately place a very big bounty on their top leaders, maybe even bigger than the one we had on bin Laden," he added, referring to the Al-Qaeda leader and mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bin Laden was killed in 2011 by the U.S. military in a nighttime raid in Pakistan.
U.S. officials and media confirmed earlier this week the release of two Americans held in Afghanistan in exchange for a Taliban man imprisoned for life in California on drug and terrorism charges.
The two Americans who were set free were not identified by the Afghan Foreign Ministry, but according to U.S. media reports and family members, they were Ryan Corbett and William McKenty.
SEE ALSO: 2 U.S. Men Freed In Afghanistan In Exchange For Taliban Serving Life In CaliforniaNo mention was made of two other U.S. citizens -- George Glezmann and Mahmood Habibi-- who have been held by the Taliban since 2022. It was unclear whether these were the hostages that Rubio referred to.
The member of the Taliban who was released was Khan Mohammed, who had been sentenced to two life terms in 2008. The Afghan Foreign Ministry said his release came “as a result of long and fruitful negotiations” between Afghanistan and the United States.
A member of the new administration of President Donald Trump told reporters in Washington that the deal was brokered by President Joe Biden’s team before he left office on January 20.
Details of the negotiations were not revealed. The United States, like most countries, does not recognize the Taliban -- which seized power in Kabul in mid-2021 -- as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan.
White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement on January 21 that the Trump administration "will continue to demand the release of all Americans held by the Taliban, especially in light of the billions of dollars in U.S. aid they’ve received in recent years."
Rubio's bounty comment came two days after the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said that he has requested warrants for the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, and the head of Afghanistan's Supreme Court, Abdul Hakim Haqqani.
Karim Khan announced that he is seeking arrest warrants for the alleged persecution of Afghan women and girls, an accusation the Taliban-run Foreign Ministry called "baseless."
In a statement, Khan said based on evidence collected thus far in an investigation reopened in October 2022 there were grounds to believe Akhundzada and Haqqani "bear criminal responsibility for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds."
Mir Abdul Wahid Sadat, head of the Afghan Lawyers Association, told RFE/RL, that the ICC decisions and actions "have strong consequences" and said Khan's announcement was "a big threat to the Taliban."