Taliban frees US, Aussie hostages
KABUL (AP) — The Taliban say they have freed two hostages — American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks — in southern Afghanistan, ending more than three years of their captivity.
A Taliban official says the release took place yesterday in the province of Zabul in the Now Bahar district, a region that is largely under Taliban control.
It wasn’t immediately known if the two hostages, both professors at the American University of Kabul, were handed over to Afghan government representatives, intermediaries, or US forces.
Their freedom came hours after the Afghan government freed three Taliban prisoners and sent them to Qatar. The three included Anas Haqqani, the younger brother of the Taliban’s deputy Sirajuddin Haqqani, who also leads the fearsome Haqqani network.
It appears the Taliban had refused to hand over the two professors until they received proof their men had reached Qatar. Three ranking Taliban prisoners released by the Kabul government have been flown to Qatar for an expected swap for the American and Australian hostages held by the insurgents since their abduction in 2016, Taliban officials said yesterday.
The whereabouts of the two hostages was not immediately known.
The Taliban officials told The Associated Press that the exchange would likely take place on yesterday. They said the three of their members arrived in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar on Monday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani a week ago announced the “conditional release’’ of the Taliban figures, saying at a press event broadcast live on state television that it was a very hard decision he felt he had to make in the interest of the Afghan people.
King and Weeks, the two captives held by the Taliban were abducted in 2016 outside the American University in Kabul where they both work as teachers.
The following year, the Taliban released two videos showing the captives. A January 2017 video showed them appearing pale and gaunt. In the later video, King and Weeks looked healthier and said a deadline for their release was set for June 16 that year.
Both said they are being treated well by the Taliban but that they remain prisoners and appealed to their governments to help set them free. It was impossible to know whether they were forced to speak.
Subsequently, US officials said that American forces had launched a rescue mission to free the two, but the captives were not found at the raided location.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien made separate calls to Ghani on Monday to discuss the prisoners’ release, Ghani’s spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said.
The release and swap were intended to try to restart talks to end Afghanistan’s 18-year war and allow for the eventual withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.