Afghan Taliban to release US detainee Dennis Coyle after plea from his mother

KABUL, March 24 (Reuters) – The Afghan Taliban government said on Tuesday that it has decided to release U.S. detainee Dennis Coyle in response to a request from his mother, weeks after Washington censured Afghanistan over its detention of ​American citizens.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio this month designated Afghanistan’s Taliban government as a “state sponsor of wrongful detention”, demanding that Kabul release all U.S. citizens detained ​in the country, including Coyle and Mahmood Habibi, the former head of Afghanistan’s civil aviation.

Sources told Reuters that Washington could ban U.S. passport holders from travelling to ‌Afghanistan if it did not comply, a restriction currently only in place for North Korea.

The Taliban foreign ministry said in a statement that Afghan authorities had received a letter from Coyle’s mother requesting that her son be pardoned and released on the occasion of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr, following which the Supreme Court of Afghanistan “deemed the period of his detention sufficient and decided to release him”.

Afghanistan did not detain citizens of any country for political purposes but over violations of its laws, the statement quoted Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi as saying, and they were released following the completion of judicial procedures.

In Washington, a senior U.S. administration official said Coyle, 64, was taken from his home in Kabul in January 2025 and held without charges in near-solitary confinement.

His release followed direct action led by Rubio and a unified interagency effort, the official said, and credited the persistence of Coyle’s three sisters, whose advocacy helped drive the effort.  

(Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar in Kabul and Steve Holland in Washington; Writing by Tanvi Mehta and YP Rajesh; Editing by Alex Richardson)