‘Taliban are hunting me and I’m terrified’

AN Afghan translator credited with helping save the lives of dozens of British soldiers trapped for nearly two months by the Taliban said yesterday that their fighters have been trying to hunt him down.

Fardin, 37, said that twice in the past ten days a suspected Taliban fighter had been in his home neighbourhood of the Afghan capital Kabul asking neighbours and shopkeepers exactly where he lives with his wife and children.

‘I am terrified,’ he said. ‘My wife is crying constantly. All the evidence is that they are searching for me and that can only be for one reason… to kill me because I work for the British. They know what I look like, they know what I did for the British and they want revenge.’

Fardin, who still works with British forces in Kabul, was one of three Afghan interpreters who were the ‘eyes and ears’ of 88 soldiers cut off and surrounded by 500 Taliban at the outpost of Musa Qala in Helmand for 56 days. He monitored Taliban radio signals, providing vital details of planned attacks.

Despite his bravery and the fact he has worked with the British for more than a decade, he has been told he does not qualify for sanctuary in the UK because he did not spend a full year on the front line.

The refusal to help Fardin and his family has outraged former soldiers. Sergeant Freddie Kruyer, 49, an ex-intelligence officer, said Fardin and his two colleagues were ‘instrumental’ in saving soldiers’ lives a ‘number of times’ during the siege in autumn 2006.

The extraordinary bravery of the men and the key role of interpreters in brokering a ceasefire was highlighted in a book about the siege, No Way Out, which was serialised in the Mail earlier this month.