The US military yesterday denounced the release of a video showing a soldier captured in Afghanistan, calling the images Taliban propaganda that violated international law.
The video shows the soldier in traditional Afghan dress, being prompted in English by his captors to call for US forces to be withdrawn from Afghanistan.
“The use of the soldier for propaganda purposes we view as against international law,” military spokesman Captain Jon Stock said, confirming that the man in the video was the missing soldier, whose name has not been released. “We are continuing to do whatever possible to recover the soldier safe and unharmed.”
The US military was distributing leaflets last week seeking the release of the soldier, missing since late last month.
Military spokeswoman Captain Elizabeth Matthias said it was the first case she was aware of in which a US service member was held captive by the enemy in Afghanistan, although there have been similar cases in Iraq.
The video has not appeared yet on Web sites regularly used by the Taliban or al-Qaeda.
In the video, portions of which were available on the Internet video sharing site YouTube, the soldier appeared with his head shaven and a slight beard, wearing traditional gray, loose-fitting Afghan shalwar kameez clothing.
He appears to be in good health and is shown drinking tea and eating bread and rice. When he speaks to the camera, a voice can occasionally be heard prompting him in English.
“Well, I am scared. I’m scared I won’t be able to go home. It is very unnerving to be a prisoner,” the soldier says. “I have my girlfriend who is hoping to marry. I have my grandma and grandpas. I have a very, very good family that I love back home in America.”
A voice off camera prompts: “Miss them.”
The soldier continues: “And I miss them every day that I’m gone. I miss them and I’m afraid that I might never see them again and that I’ll never be able to tell them that I love them again. I’ll never be able to hug them.”
At one point the voice prompts: “Any message to your people?”
“Yes. To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it’s like to miss them: You have the power to make our government bring them home,” the soldier says. “Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here wasting our time and our lives and our precious life that we could be using back in our own country.”
Mawlavi Sangin, a senior Taliban commander in Paktika Province, the southeastern area where the soldier went missing, told reporters on Thursday his men were holding the soldier and would kill him if the military applied pressure to find him.
Some US leaflets dropped in the area showed a US soldier shaking hands with smiling Afghan children and read: “One of our American guests is missing. Return the guest to his home.”
But others were more aggressive, showing soldiers kicking in the doors of a house, with the words: “If you do not release the US soldier you will be hunted.”
Cases of US troops going missing have been rare during the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Iraq, three soldiers were captured by insurgents after a firefight in 2007 in an area south of Baghdad known as the triangle of death. One was killed shortly after his capture, while the other two were found dead nearly two months later.
In 2005, Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell was rescued after being cared for by Afghan villagers for five days. He was the only survivor of an ambushed four-man patrol.
HELPING HAND: Taiwan is ready to help other nations and will not sit idly by while the global fight against the coronavirus continues, President Tsai Ing-wen said Taiwan, as a responsible member of the international community, is to offer humanitarian assistance to nations hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic by sending them masks and medicine, as well as sharing with them an electronic system that the government has been using to track down people that need to be quarantined, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday. With the nation’s daily production having reached 13 million masks and soon to reach 15 million, the government is to donate 10 million masks to medical personnel in nations most severely affected by the coronavirus, Tsai said at the Presidential Office in Taipei. The
NINE NEW CASES: The CECC said two locally transmitted cases of COVID-19, and seven imported ones – five women and two men – brought the nation’s total to 348 People who refuse to wear a mask on public transportation after being asked to do so would face a NT$3,000 to NT$15,000 fine, effective immediately, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday after announcing nine additional COVID-19 cases. In a move to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications on Tuesday announced that people must wear masks on trains and intercity buses, while Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, on Tuesday said that people should wear them when they cannot maintain a social distance of 1.5m indoors. Chen yesterday
TRILLION PROPOSED: The premier said the goal was to keep ‘businesses solvent, the unemployment rate down, transportation and logistics going, and cash flowing’ The Executive Yuan yesterday announced an expanded economic stimulus package totaling NT$1.05 trillion (US$34.64 billion), including NT$81.6 billion in subsidies for employers to prevent a spike in unemployment. The increased budget comprises a special budget of NT$210 billion, up from the NT$60 billion already passed by the Legislative Yuan; NT$140 billion — up from NT$40 billion — to be appropriated from the general budget; and NT$700 billion in loans to industries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics Minister Chu Tzer-ming (朱澤民) told a news conference at the Executive Yuan in Taipei. The NT$150 billion increase in the
The Central Epidemic Command Center yesterday released a set of revised criteria for reporting suspected COVID-19 cases, while also announcing its guidelines for disclosing patients’ personal information. The center said that its advisory specialist panel revised the definition for “severe pneumonia with novel pathogens” — COVID-19 infection — by expanding the criteria needed to report suspected cases. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the center, said that physicians should report people for testing if they meet one of three clinical conditions: They have a fever, acute respiratory infection, or a lack of smell or taste; there is a
RSS