WASHINGTON — An American man who was abducted more than two years ago while traveling through Afghanistan as a tourist has been released by the Taliban in a deal brokered by U.S. and Qatari negotiators, the State Department said Thursday.

George Glezmann, an airline mechanic from Atlanta, is the third American detainee to be released by the Taliban since January. He was seized by the Taliban’s intelligence services in December 2022 and was designated by the U.S. government as wrongfully detained the following year.

He was being accompanied back to the U.S., through Qatar’s capital, Doha, by Adam Boehler, who has been handling hostage issues for President Donald Trump’s administration. Qatar has hosted negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban over the years.

The release of Glezmann is part of what the Taliban has previously described as the “normalization” of ties between the U.S. and Afghanistan following the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Most countries still don’t recognize the Taliban’s rule.

Glezmann’s release follows a separate deal, arranged in the final days of the Biden administration and also mediated by the Qataris, that secured the releases of Ryan Corbett and William McKenty. The Taliban’s Foreign Ministry in Kabul said at the time that those two U.S. citizens had been exchanged for Khan Mohammed, who was sentenced to two life terms in 2008 after being convicted under U.S. narco-terrorism laws.

Unlike in that arrangement, the U.S. did not give up any prisoner to secure Glezmann’s release, which was seen as a goodwill gesture, according to an official briefed on the matter who insisted on anonymity due to the sensitivity of the negotiations.

The Taliban disclosed earlier Thursday that Boehler had been meeting on hostage issues with a delegation that included Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi.

President Joe Biden contemplated before he left office an earlier proposal that would have involved the release of Glezmann and other Americans for Muhammad Rahim, one of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But Biden told families during a call in January that he would not support trading Rahim unless the Taliban released Afghan-American businessman Mahmood Habibi.

U.S. officials believe the Taliban is holding Habibi, but the Taliban has denied it.

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Associated Press writer Victoria Eastwood in Cairo contributed to this report.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A man convicted of kidnapping a woman in Miami and later strangling her to death is set to be executed next month under a death warrant Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Monday.

Michael Tanzi, 48, is scheduled to be executed April 8 at Florida State Prison.

Janet Acosta was seated inside her parked van in April 2000 when Tanzi attacked her and threatened her with a razor blade, according to court documents. Tanzi bound and gagged the woman and began heading toward the Florida Keys in her van. Tanzi sexually assaulted Acosta at one point and used her bank card to take money from ATMs.

Tanzi eventually drove to an isolated area of Cudjoe Key, where he strangled Acosta and left her body, officials said. He then drove to Key West to visit friends. As Tanzi was making his way through the Keys, Acosta’s friends reported her missing. Police recognized the woman’s van and arrested Tanzi.

Tanzi’s execution would be the state’s third so far this year. James Dennis Ford was put to death in February for murdering a couple in 1997 in Charlotte County. Edward James is scheduled to be executed March 20 for murdering a woman and raping and killing her 8-year-old-granddaughter in Seminole County in 1993.

MEDIA, Pa. — A retired minister from Georgia was found not guilty Friday in the killing of an 8-year-old girl whose remains were found in a southeastern Pennsylvania park almost a half-century ago.

A jury acquitted David Zandstra, 84, of the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, after deliberating for an hour following a four-day trial.

Zandstra was charged in the summer of 2023 with kidnapping and killing Gretchen Harrington, who disappeared in 1975 while walking alone to a Bible camp at a chapel where Zandstra was a pastor. Her body was found two months later by a jogger in Ridley Creek State Park in Media, Pennsylvania.

Harrington was offered a ride by Zandstra the day she disappeared, the Delaware County district attorney said when the charges were filed. Prosecutors said Zandstra had confessed to the killing after investigators received new information and then interviewed the retired minister.

His attorney, Mark Much, told jurors that detectives pressured and tricked Zandstra into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. Defense attorneys said there was no physical evidence linking the retired minister to the girl’s death and that police had investigated other suspects who were more likely to be the killer.

Defense attorney Christopher Boggs told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Zandstra’s family was glad he could come home after 18 months in custody.

In the days after the girl disappeared, hundreds of people searched nearby wooded areas, and authorities distributed more than 2,000 leaflets and set up a 24-hour hotline that took hundreds of calls, The Inquirer reported.

When the girl’s body was found, her clothing was “folded and in a neat pile” near her body with her underwear hanging from a tree branch “like a flag … as if to call attention to the place,” the newspaper said at the time.