6 Taliban exchanged for German captive

KABUL (Afghanistan)—A German engineer and four Afghans taken hostage in July were freed Wednesday in exchange for six Taliban fighters, an Afghan official said. Rudolf Blechschmidt and the four Afghans were handed over by local elders to officials from Afghanistan’s intelligence service in the Jaghato district of Wardak province, said the district chief, Mohammad Nahim.
Six detained Taliban militants had been freed in the swap, he said. In Germany, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier confirmed that Blechschmidt had been freed, and the former captive told Spiegel magazine on his release that he was “doing well.”
“I’m just a little tired,” he told the magazine in a short telephone interview posted on its Web site. Blechschmidt had also talked with the German ambassador by telephone and confirmed he was safely in the custody of Afghan security forces, Steinmeier said in a statement. “We are all pleased and relieved,” Steinmeier said.
The release comes just two days after Blechschmidt appeared on a new videotape, appealing to Afghan and German governments to make a deal with the militants for his release before winter. Blechschmidt said in the video that he was in poor health but that an Afghan doctor had helped him.
Blechschmidt is one of two German engineers and five Afghans taken hostage on July 18 in Wardak province in central Afghanistan. The other German was found dead of gunshot wounds on July 21, while one of the Afghans apparently managed to escape.
Four Red Cross employees were taken hostage by the Taliban on Sept. 27 while trying to win the German’s release. The four were released in good health two days later. On the video, Blechschmidt said the German Embassy had refused to engage in talks for a time, but that negotiations had restarted recently and that “we hope we will become free.” Kidnappings by Taliban militants and criminal gangs have risen in Afghanistan in recent months. A series of high-profile kidnappings have led to ransom payments and prisoner releases, apparently fueling the rise in the abductions.
The governments of Italy and Afghanistan came under criticism earlier this year when five imprisoned militants were freed in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist. At the time, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the exchange a one-time deal.
Taliban rebels freed a German hostage in Afghanistan on Wednesday after more than two months of captivity, Germany’s foreign minister said. “The German citizen ... who was kidnapped in Afghanistan is once again free. We are happy and relieved,” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in a statement, adding the German ambassador in Afghanistan had spoken to the man by telephone.
The German engineer, Rudolf Blechschmidt, and the five Afghans were seized along with another German in Wardak province, just southwest of the capital Kabul, in July. The Taliban kidnappers shot dead the other German soon afterwards after he suffered a heart attack.
The Taliban had demanded Germany withdraw its more than 3,000 troops from Afghanistan, something Berlin flatly refused to do. The local Taliban leader behind the kidnap, Mullah Nizamuddin, handed the German and the five Afghan captives over to government authorities in exchange for rebel chief’s father and three supporters arrested after the incident, the private Afghan news agency Pajhwok said.
The six captives were kept in a darkened room with one blanket between them in a mountainous area in Wardak, according to an Afghan reporter who visited the men last week. The rebels last month briefly kidnapped four employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who had traveled to accept the handover of the six men, but the deal feel through.—Agencies