How a CIA hit on al Qaeda ensnared a US citizen in Afghanistan, World News

AsiaOne

4 days ago

WASHINGTON - As a crowd looked on, uniformed Taliban surrounded the Toyota Landcruiser in which Mahmood Habibi, a naturalised US citizen, sat. Other Taliban smashed open the door of his Kabul apartment, emerging later with his laptop and papers.
Blindfolded in the back seat, Habibi and his driver were driven off by gunmen sporting shoulder patches of the Taliban's feared secret police, the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), according to several witness statements in US government possession seen by Reuters.
Afghanistan's Taliban government denies it detained Habibi, 37, who was a former head of Afghanistan's civil aviation. While dividing his time between the United States and Kabul working for a private company, he became a US citizen after the Taliban took power in 2021. The Taliban also says they have no knowledge of his whereabouts, three years after he disappeared.
That is contradicted by the witness accounts and other evidence, including data monitored from Habibi's cellphone, described to Reuters by a US official and a former US official familiar with the matter.
The Taliban denials present a conundrum for the FBI, which is leading the US government effort to gain his release; and for the State Department, which describes Habibi's detention a major impediment to exploring increased engagement with Afghanistan, three years after his Aug 10, 2022 arrest.
US President Donald Trump has made freeing Americans held abroad a top priority and already has secured the release of dozens, including from Afghanistan, Russia and Venezuela.
The case of Habibi - the only publicly identified American held in the country - has been harder to resolve.
This story is the most comprehensive account to date of the circumstances of Habibi's capture and includes previously unreported details.
Among them, interviews with the US official and a former US official with knowledge of the case reveal that the Taliban likely detained Habibi because the CIA had penetrated the company where he worked. The sources say the US spy agency had accessed one of the company's security cameras, helping it pinpoint the al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul guesthouse.
Habibi's detention came 10 days after Zawahiri - the last of the top plotters of the Sept 11, 2001, attack on the United States - was dramatically assassinated by a US drone strike on the guesthouse, ordered by Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden.
At the time, US officials briefed journalists that it was a CIA operation. The US sources told Reuters that Habibi was unaware of the CIA plot and was wrongly detained after returning to Kabul from a work trip to Dubai after the assassination, oblivious of the danger he was in.
The CIA, the Taliban, the White House and Habibi's employer, Virginia-based ARX Communications, did not respond to detailed requests for comment for this story. ARX has previously said neither it, nor its subsidiaries, were involved with the strike on Zawahiri. Reuters could not independently verify whether Habibi was or wasn't aware of the plot.
In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesperson called for Habibi's immediate release.
"We know the Taliban abducted Mahmood Habibi nearly three years ago," the spokesperson said.
A co-worker detained with Habibi, then later released, saw him in GDI headquarters and heard him in an adjacent room being asked if he worked for the CIA or was involved in the strike on Zawahiri, according to one of the statements in US government possession, seen by Reuters.
Then, in June and August of 2023, the US government detected that his mobile phone had been switched on in GDI headquarters, the US official and former official said.
Reuters could not reach the witnesses who made statements, including the coworker, or verify the accuracy of their account of Habibi's detention. The US official familiar with the matter said excerpts of the statements have been presented to the Taliban in response to their repeated denials of Habibi's detention.
As Habibi and his family on Sunday mark the third anniversary of his arrest, the Trump administration has stepped up efforts to win his release, including offering a US$5 million (S$6.4 million) reward for information. But so far, he appears no closer to freedom, the US sources said.
"Our family has new hope that the Trump team will be successful," said Habibi's older brother, Ahmad.
Ahmad said his brother would never have gone to Kabul four days after the Zawahiri assassination if the CIA had told ARX to warn him it was too dangerous to return.
"Nobody told him anything. Neither the company, neither the CIA nor anybody. So, he just went back," Ahmad said.
The US government officially considers Habibi a hostage, said the US official, because his arrest and location remain unconfirmed by the Taliban. The official and the former official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the case.
In response to a request for comment, the FBI said that along with partners in other US departments involved in hostage recovery, it remains "committed to bringing Habibi home to his family."
The Taliban rejected an offer made last year to trade Habibi for alleged Osama bin Laden aide Mohammad Rahim al-Afghani, the last Afghan held in the Guantanamo Bay military prison.
"We've tried in terms of both carrots and sticks," said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the case.
The Taliban "literally throw up a wall," said the official. Camera on cell tower
As part of the operation against Zawahiri, the CIA penetrated the Asia Consultancy Group (ACG), a subsidiary of ARX, according to the current and former US officials, who provided previously unreported details of how the spy agency was able to target the al Qaeda chief. Reuters presented these details to the CIA, ACG and ARX, requesting comment, but received no response.
ACG, whose parent is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, had a contract to erect cellphone towers around Kabul, the sources said. CCTV cameras were fitted to the towers to protect the structures, they said.
One of the cameras, the sources said, was pointed at a house US officials have linked to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban's acting interior minister both at the time and now, in the heart of Kabul's diplomatic quarter, a short distance from the shuttered British and American embassies.
The sources said the camera sent back video to the CIA confirming Zawahiri's presence in the residence.
That confirmation helped the agency kill the Egyptian Islamist with two drone-fired Hellfire R9X missiles on July 31, 2022, as he emerged onto a balcony, they said. His wife and family survived the strike.
While officials in the Biden administration at the time described the CIA's drone operation to kill Zawahiri with Hellfires, the details of the agency's operation on the ground, including the presence of the camera and its role in identifying Zawahiri have not been previously disclosed. Arrest
On the day of his arrest, Mahmood Habibi was in his apartment in Kabul's Sherpur neighbourhood packing to return to New Jersey, where he had a home, with the help of a sister, who was there with her two children, according to Ahmad.
It was about noon when a phone call came from the ACG office saying it had just been raided by the Taliban, Ahmad said. Habibi told his sister that he had to leave without explaining why. He was arrested immediately after getting into his vehicle, Ahmad said.
A few minutes later, somebody announcing that they were with GDI knocked on his apartment door, according to Ahmad and a witness statement. His sister declined to open it, telling those outside that she had to conform to the Taliban rule that an adult male relative had to be present.
The Taliban broke open the door, entered the apartment and rifled through closets and drawers, demanding Habibi's laptop, according to Ahmad and the witness statement.
A crowd had gathered outside after the Taliban arrived in five vehicles, blocked the street and surrounded Habibi's car, before driving him off, according to Ahmad and a separate witness statement.
The GDI arrested 30 other ACG employees, according to a letter that ACG sent to Afghanistan's Ministry of Communications, seen by Reuters. Except for Habibi and one other, all were eventually released.
In the letter, dated Sept 15, 2022, ACG asked that family members be allowed to visit him and three other staff who the GDI still held.
The ministry appeared to confirm Habibi was a GDI prisoner in a reply two days later, seen by Reuters, saying that the intelligence directorate would decide on the petition when its investigation was completed.
However, in a July 3, 2025 statement reported by Afghanistan's state news agency, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that in response to requests from Habibi's family, the Taliban had investigated but no evidence has been found to suggest that he was detained by Afghanistan's security forces.
Mujahid said the Taliban are a legitimate governing body that does not detain individuals without due process or hide them from public view. Mujahid did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. US citizen
Born to parents from the southern city of Kandahar, Habibi is one of eight siblings - three brothers and five sisters - who grew up in the Kabul neighbourhood of Karte Parwan.
His excellent English helped him secure a job with the UN civil aviation agency in Kabul in 2008. He worked for the US Federal Aviation Administration's US embassy office from 2011 to 2013.
Tapped as deputy civil aviation minister, Habibi helped transition Afghanistan's air traffic system from US control to the US-backed Kabul government. Habibi became civil aviation minister in 2017. He held that post until 2019 while earning a civil aviation master's degree from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, the university confirmed.
In 2019, he resigned and then joined ARX to help oversee its Afghan subsidiary's contract to run air traffic control at Kabul's international airport. Habibi lived between the city and the United States, accumulating the last of the 30 months of US residency he needed over a five-year period for US citizenship in 2021, Ahmad said.
He was in Kabul with his family during the chaotic departure of the last US troops in August 2021, Ahmad said, as the Taliban consolidated its grip on the capital after 20 years of war.
Habibi flew from Dubai to Kabul on Aug 4, 2022, after stopping in Qatar to check on his family and parents who were housed on a US military base there waiting for final processing of US immigration visas, said Ahmad. A week later Habibi was arrested.
His wife, daughter and parents, who waited in Qatar until October for their visas before flying to the United States and settling in California, have not seen or heard from him since.
Resolving Habibi's case would be the easiest way for the Taliban, who crave international recognition as Afghanistan's legitimate rulers, to explore improving ties with the US, the current US official said.
Since Habibi's detention, four other Americans have been arrested and released by the Taliban.
[[nid:719416]]