SEALs tried to locate US citizen taken by Afghan militants
By JAMES LAPORTA and ERIC TUCKER
an hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — In the days following the capture of an American contractor in Afghanistan earlier this year, Navy commandos raided a village and detained suspected members of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network while the U.S. intelligence community tried to track the cellphones of the man and his captors, The Associated Press has learned.
While the circumstances surrounding the abduction remain unclear, the previously unreported operation described by multiple American officials over the past month shed new light on early efforts to locate Mark R. Frerichs, a contractor from Illinois whose disappearance has been shrouded in mystery and whose case has been the subject of minimal public discussion by the U.S. government.
The new details emerge as violence and political infighting in Kabul threaten to scuttle a Taliban peace deal with the U.S. Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo voiced frustrations after a failed attempt to mediate a power struggle between Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and political rival Dr. Abdullah Abdullah. The Trump administration said it would cut $1 billion in aid to Afghanistan.
Washington has urged Kabul to release Taliban prisoners, which is part of the peace agreement, arguing the detainees were at risk of spreading the coronavirus.
LaPorta reported from Delray Beach, Florida. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington, Kathy Gannon in Islamabad and Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/1ccf33cbb298b705c0192465f94caebf
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