The Taliban yesterday released a video purporting to show a US soldier who was captured more than five months ago in eastern Afghanistan.
The media arm of the Afghan Taliban announced last week on an affiliated Web site that a new videotape of Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl was forthcoming. They did not name the US captive, but the only one known is Bergdahl, a US airborne infantryman who was captured by the Afghan Taliban in Paktika Province on June 30.
It could not be confirmed immediately that it was Bergdahl in the new video, which was released to news organizations. A man is shown seated, facing the camera, wearing sunglasses and what appears to be a US military helmet and uniform. A caption below the man speaking says “War prisoner: Bowe Robert Bergdahl.”
PHOTO: AFP
On one side of the image it says: “An American soldier imprisoned by the Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
The man identifies himself as Bergdahl, born in Sun Valley, Idaho, and gives his rank, birth date, blood type, his unit and mother’s maiden name before beginning a lengthy verbal attack on the US conduct of the war in Afghanistan and its relations with Muslims. He appears healthy, and doesn’t appear to have been abused.
The video, which has an English-language narration in parts, also shows images of prisoners being abused and says this is not the case with himself.
The insurgents also released a video of Bergdahl a few weeks after he was captured. In the July 19 video, Bergdahl appeared downcast and frightened.
Bergdahl was serving with a unit based in Fort Richardson, Alaska, when he vanished just five months after arriving in Afghanistan. He was serving at a base near the border with Pakistan in an area known to be a Taliban stronghold.
US military officials have searched for Bergdahl, but it is not publicly known whether he is even being held in Afghanistan or neighboring Pakistan.
Lieutenant Colonel Tim Marsano, an Idaho National Guard spokesman who has been serving as a liaison between the family and media, said late on Thursday night that the family had not seen the video since word of its possible release surfaced earlier this month. He spoke with Bob and Jani Bergdahl, Bowe Bergdahl’s parents, earlier this week and described their mood as “anxiously awaiting” any new information about their son.
“They’re very hopeful that the message will be a positive one, as far as their son’s health and welfare,” Marsano said.
Marsano said the family still wasn’t speaking publicly about Bergdahl’s capture.
The man on the video contrasts his treatment with reports of prisoner abuse at US detention centers, saying: “I was continuously treated as a human being with dignity. I had nobody deprive me of my clothes and take pictures of me naked. I had no dogs barking at me and biting me, as my country has done to Muslim prisoners in the jails that I mentioned.”
He attacks US officials “for leading us to the same holes that America keeps falling into over and over and over again, be it Vietnam, Japan, Germany, Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq. And now it’s simply, now it’s Afghanistan. It’s the next hole for us to fall into ... This is just going to be the next Vietnam unless the American people stand up and stop all this nonsense.”
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