LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- U.S. Senate leaders are calling for the Taliban's immediate release of an American citizen with ties to Louisville.

Ryan Corbett has been wrongfully detained by Taliban for more than 600 days and hasn't seen his family for more than 20 months.

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) introduced a Senate Resolution calling for Corbett's immediate release. 

Corbett was detained with a charge in Afghanistan in August 2022. He has since been imprisoned in a basement cell in Kabul with limited access to food, sunlight and the outside world. 

Corbett moved to Afghanistan with his wife Anna and their kids in 2010, starting a company to help Afghans start their own small businesses. After rebuilding their lives and spending years there, Kabul fell to the Taliban. A worldwide story in 2021, the Corbetts had to flee the country with thousands of others.

Not wanting to leave the people he's helped behind, Corbett went back, and his visa was approved the following year. It was on a trip in August 2022 that he was kidnapped by the Taliban.

Back home in New York, his children are experiencing milestones without their dad.

"Our resolution reaffirms America’s commitment to freeing Ryan and raises the international stakes of the Taliban’s wrongful imprisonment of American citizens," McConnell said in a news release. "Earlier this afternoon, I had a chance to meet with Ryan’s wife, Anna, their three children, and his parents, Drue and Evelyn, from Louisville. Now more than ever, they fear for Ryan’s life. As long as Ryan sits in captivity, I will continue to call on the Biden Administration to do more to bring him home. It’s time to put the Taliban’s violent rule on notice and show our enemies that the United States will not let American citizens be used as bargaining chips."

To read about the bipartisan resolution, click here. 

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