Simpson: My fears for ex-BBC friend held in squalid cell by Taliban
JOHN SIMPSON has spoken of his fears for his close friend and former BBC cameraman who’s being held captive by the Taliban.
Distinguished British journalist Peter Jouvenal, 64, has been locked in a cell without being charged or given legal help since he was arrested in Kabul two months ago.
Mr Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor, said: ‘Conditions are bad. It’s bitterly cold, and all they have to eat each day is a bowl of rice, occasionally garnished with beans.
‘He has no access to the medicine he needs for high blood pressure.’
Mr Jouvenal has worked and travelled in Afghanistan for more than 40 years, is married to an Afghan woman and they have three children. He was with Mr Simpson in 2001 when the reporter, famously disguised in a burka, slipped into Afghanistan and they became the first journalists to show the world the last months of Taliban rule.
Mr Jouvenal also arranged and filmed the first Western interview with Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, for CNN, in 1997.
Mr Simpson last saw his friend in November – three months after the Taliban returned to power when Western troops left the country.
Two weeks later, Mr Jouvenal was abducted near the former British Embassy in Kabul but details of his plight had been kept secret amid fears for his safety.
The news emerged on Friday when another former BBC journalist, Andrew North, was taken captive the Taliban but quickly released. Mr Jouvenal, who is now a successful businessman, had reassured family he would be safe.
Another friend said: ‘He felt very comfortable in Afghanistan, even in much worse times than this. He was always cool as a cucumber in Kabul, as if he were on the French Riviera – there was no sense of impending danger.’
The friend said of his wife: ‘She’s tortured by it, thinking, “Is there another phone call I can make that will help, someone else I can contact, another button I can push to get him out?”’
His friends and family believe he may have been detained in error as he had been openly working and had frequent meetings with senior Taliban officials.
Foreign Office officials have been able to see Mr Jouvenal, who has to sleep on the concrete floor of a tiny cell that is often without light because of power cuts.