Afghanistan Frees American Detainee Amid Mounting U.S. Pressure

Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government on Tuesday freed a U.S. researcher who had been held there for over a year, amid pressure from the Trump administration to release Americans who it says are being held without justification.

Afghanistan’s leader, Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, ordered the release of the detainee, Denis Walter Coyle, after his family wrote asking for a pardon on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr, which marked the end of the holy month of Ramadan, according to a statement from the country’s foreign ministry.

Mr. Coyle, 64, who is from Colorado, had been held in Afghanistan since January 2025. He had worked there for over 20 years, researching languagesaccording to his family.

The family’s website said Mr. Coyle had not been charged with a crime but was being held “in near-solitary conditions.” The State Department in June designated him as wrongfully detained.

The United Arab Emirates facilitated the release, according to Saif Al Ketbi, that country’s special envoy to Afghanistan. Mr. Al Ketbi, who was present at the airport in Kabul, the capital, for Mr. Coyle’s release, said the United Arab Emirates had acted on the request of another party, but he declined to say who that was or when the request had been made.

Afghanistan has faced growing threats of military action from the United States, even as it is enmeshed in a military conflict with Pakistan, which accuses it of sponsoring terrorism.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated Afghanistan a “state sponsor of wrongful detention” earlier this month, accusing the Taliban government of “kidnapping individuals for ransom or to seek policy concessions.”

Adam Boehler, a senior U.S. official who serves as a special envoy for hostage response, has warned the Taliban government that if it does not release the Americans in its custody, it could face the same fate as the leaders of Venezuela and Iran. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was captured by U.S. forces in a January raid, and many Iranian leaders have been killed in the ongoing war there.

Pakistan has been carrying out dozens of airstrikes in Afghanistan, accusing its government of harboring a militant group that has attacked Pakistani security forces and civilians across their shared border. The State Department has said it supports Pakistan’s “right to defend itself.”

U.S. officials say that up to three Americans are still in Afghan custody, including Mahmood Shah Habibi, a U.S.-Afghan citizen. He disappeared in 2022, about a week after an American drone strike in Kabul killed Ayman al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s leader and a key plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Mr. Habibi’s whereabouts, and whether he is alive, remain unknown.

The United States also wants answers about Paul Edwin Overby Jr.a Massachusetts author who was last seen in 2014 in Khost, a city in southeastern Afghanistan, while researching a book.

A spokesman for the Afghan government told The New York Times earlier this year that it was ready to release two U.S. citizens, but that it wanted an Afghan inmate held in Guantánamo Bay to be freed.

The detainee, Muhammad Rahim, is accused of acting as a courier and interpreter for Osama bin Laden within Al Qaeda.

“We want these two American detainees to be released, and, at the same time, the fate of our detainee who is in Guantánamo should be made clear,” Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said in an interview with The Times in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in January.

This is a developing story.

Adam Goldman, Safiullah Padshah and Yaqoob Akbary contributed reporting.