A German engineer and four Afghans taken hostage in central Afghanistan in July were freed in a deal exchanging them for five imprisoned criminals, an Afghan official said.
Local elders handed over Rudolf Blechschmidt and the four Afghans to officials from Afghanistan's intelligence service on Wednesday in Wardak Province's Jaghato District, district chief Mohammad Nahim said.
Nahim had earlier said six Taliban militants had been freed in the swap. However, he later said that no Taliban had been released, but that five imprisoned criminals had been freed. He said one of the criminals was the father of the Taliban commander who had taken the German and Afghans.
Nahim said Afghan elders had arranged the exchange. An interior ministry spokesman confirmed the release but said he did not have further details about how it was arranged.
Blechschmidt arrived at the German Embassy in Kabul on Wednesday evening, about three hours after his release. An embassy official said Blechschmidt would not make any comments to media.
Blechschmidt told Germany's Spiegel magazine upon his release that he was "doing well."
"I'm just a little tired," the magazine quoted him as saying in a short telephone interview posted on its Web site.
"We are all very relieved and overjoyed," Markus Blechschmidt, the former hostage's son, said on German regional broadcaster Antenne Bayern.
He said the family had spoken briefly to the engineer after his release.
"He had thought he would never be freed," Markus Blechschmidt said. "We are hoping to be able to give him a big hug as quickly as possible."
"The whole stress of the past three months is finally over," the son said. "We can hardly believe it."
A series of high-profile kidnappings by Taliban militants and criminal gangs have led to ransom payments and prisoner releases in Afghanistan, apparently fueling an increase in abductions in recent months.
The Italian and Afghan governments drew criticism earlier this year when five imprisoned militants were freed in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist. Afghan President Hamid Karzai had then called the exchange a one-time deal.
Blechschmidt said in a video obtained by APTN on Monday that he was in poor health, and pleaded with the German and Afghan governments to cut a deal with the Taliban before winter.
Blechschmidt said the German embassy had refused to engage in negotiations for a time, but that negotiations had restarted recently.
The Taliban took four Red Cross employees hostage on Sept. 27 during efforts to facilitate the German's release. The four were released in good health two days later.
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
RSS