Freed aid workers recall ordeal

Rescued German aid workers left to right, Katrin Jelinek, Silke Durrkopf and Margrit Stebner, arrive at the German Embassy in Islamabad yesterday after they were rescued from Afghanistan by US special forces. Eight foreign aid workers, including four Germans, two Australians and two Americans were rescued from the Taliban. PHOTO: REUTERS

They endured three months in captivity, a hasty evacuation from Kabul with fleeing Taliban forces, a freezing night locked in a metal container and a harrowing morning in jail under deafening artillery bombardment.

But the eight aid workers detained by the fundamentalist Taliban on charges of promoting Christianity finally reached safety yesterday, plucked from a field in Afghanistan in the dead of night by US helicopters and spirited out to Pakistan.

"It was like a miracle," German detainee Georg Taubmann told reporters on arrival at his country's embassy in Islamabad.

Taubmann was detained by the Taliban in early August along with seven fellow workers from Shelter Now International -- Australians Peter Bunch and Diana Thomas, Americans Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, and Germans Katrin Jelinek, Margrit Stebner and Silke Durrkopf. The charges carried the death penalty.

There has been no word on the fate of 16 Afghan aid workers detained on similar charges with the Westerners.

The Westerners were held in Kabul through more than a month of pounding US air strikes aimed at destroying the Taliban and the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the deadly Sept. 11 hijack attacks on New York and Washington.

New ordeal

And just as their hopes were raised on Monday by news opposition forces were poised to take Kabul, they were flung into a fresh ordeal -- taken out of the capital by retreating Taliban forces heading towards their stronghold of Kandahar.

"Just before Kabul fell we were so excited to get out, we heard already that troops were coming in," said a smiling Taubmann, looking healthy despite his months in captivity.

"And then the Taliban came in and took us away, took us in vehicles and wanted to take us to Kandahar, and we knew that if we ended up in Kandahar we would probably not survive there."

On arrival in the town of Ghazni, about 80km southwest of Kabul, the eight workers were locked in a metal container through the chill Afghan night.

"In the middle of the night at one o'clock they put us all into a steel container. It was terribly cold and they wanted to lock the container and leave us in there till the morning," Taubmann said.

"We had no blankets, nothing almost, because they said they will bring us to a nice different area, and we were freezing the whole night."

`A terrible place'

On Tuesday morning they were moved to a Ghazni jail just before opposition forces began a fierce artillery assault.

"It was a terrible place," Taubmann said.

"I think it was the worst place. We arrived at 9am. Right when we came the bombardment started."

Around 10am there was an anti-Taliban uprising in the town and an hour later forces of the Northern Alliance flung open the prison doors, Taubmann said, adding that the aid workers initially feared it was the Taliban coming back to get them.

"We were really scared," he said.

Released from prison, the aid workers received a rapturous reception from the people of Ghazni.

"The people came out of the houses and they hugged us and they greeted us, they were all clapping," Taubmann said.

"They didn't know there were foreigners in the prison so it was a big attraction ... it was like a big celebration for all these people. The biggest day in my life."

But the aid workers were still deep inside a country racked by war. Bernard Barrett, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Islamabad, said a local opposition commander in Ghazni contacted the ICRC to try to arrange their evacuation.

Logistics problems

After another night in Ghazni, a decision was made on Wednesday to bring them out by air. "At one point yesterday [Wednesday] a decision was made -- the best, the fastest and the safest way would be to evacuate by air and at that point we basically stepped back from the operation," Barrett told CNN.

Three Special Operations helicopters buzzed into a field near Ghazni and picked up the aid workers in the early hours yesterday, the Pentagon said.

Australian diplomat Alistair Adams said there had been logistics problems before the aid workers were evacuated.

"They are very fortunate to be able to get out," he said.

"There were some difficulties with the logistics last evening but fortunately that's gone very well and I think the military operation that secured them went very well."