On the 600th day of Ryan Corbett’s imprisonment by the Taliban, his wife, Anna, is worried about him. She received a troubling call that indicated Ryan’s physical and mental condition were fast deteriorating.
Anna and Ryan are parents to a boy and two girls. After relocating to Afghanistan in 2010, The Corbetts remained there until the Taliban regained control in August 2021. In 2022, he returned on a 1-year visa to establish Bloom Afghanistan and collaborate with US non-governmental organizations.
According to her statement in an exclusive interview with Fox & Friends First, she expressed her heartbreak after speaking to him for 12 minutes and realizing that he had given up hope. He was recently ill with a high temperature, and no one noticed it. Nobody had visited him since December 2023.
Ryan’s predicament is bleak. An NBC News article from December states that the former business consultant has to consume fatty meat scraps, ask for toilet breaks, and spend most of his time in the dark. Other inmates who were kept in his cell have said the same thing.
Anna has taken her husband’s cause to DC nine times. Negotiations tend to slow when she cannot meet with authorities in person.
Despite her desire to meet with President Biden, Corbett said she has not yet done so, but she thinks he could certainly do more to assist.
He has already visited with the relatives of the hostages in Gaza on many occasions. She wondered how she could trust this was a priority when Biden refused to speak with her after repeated meeting requests.
Corbett’s family met with Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-LA) in March. McGarvey’s aide asked the State Department to provide updates on Corbett’s health.
In February, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs convened to deliberate a resolution bringing him home. Last November, Anna Corbett begged the same committee to assist her. Following deliberation, the committee unanimously recommended the resolution to the House for full consideration. While speaking at the conference, Republican Representative Michael McCaul of Texas said that Congress wasn’t going to stop until Ryan and all other American citizens unjustly jailed are sent home.
