International Security - Emerging Threats - Analysis - UPI.com
Sphere: Related Content
A German man who was the Taliban's hostage for three months has for the first time spoken about his ordeal. It's a tale of terrorism, corruption and psychological warfare up in the mountains of Afghanistan, where the Taliban, and not the Western forces, call the shots.
On Oct. 10, Rudolf Blechschmidt, a German engineer, was freed together with his five Afghan co-workers after a three-month hostage ordeal in Afghanistan.
Blechschmidt, 62, was one of two German engineers working on reconstruction projects who were kidnapped along with their Afghan co-workers on July 18 in Wardak province, southwest of Kabul. The other German engineer was shot during the kidnapping.
After the German’s construction company had gotten a job to reconstruct a dam in Afghanistan’s Wardak province, Blechschmidt and his colleague, Ruediger Diedrich, 43, wanted to see the dam before signing the papers; they asked for a police escort and after initial refusals finally got 10 police armed with AK-47 rifles. Yet when a group of Taliban surrounded them and took the Germans and their Afghan co-workers hostage, the police merely watched.
"They knew that foreigners who probably had money were coming to repair the dam," he told Stern. The Taliban then drove the eight hostages into the mountains, where they endured severe beatings and abuses. To this day, Blechschmidt has trouble hearing.
"I told Diedrich: 'You have to drink your urine.' I did it myself," he said. "And because it was so cold at night, I told him, 'Didi, we’ll hug each other and warm ourselves.'"
While Diedrich became increasingly weak, the Taliban refused to call a doctor. And it’s the account surrounding his colleague’s death when Blechschmidt has trouble keeping his voice.
Two days after they were kidnapped, a young Taliban fighter shot Diedrich when he refused to keep walking.
He added the fighters got a cell-phone call every morning from their Taliban leadership, waking them up when it was time to pray.
"They had the best photo camera cell phones," Blechschmidt said. "They showed us a video clip in which they cut an American’s throat. Because they don’t take prisoners, ‘We can’t take them with us,’ they said."
Meanwhile, a German special unit was trying together with Afghan officials to establish contact with the kidnappers, but according to officials, without success. Yet Blechschmidt claims a German diplomat prevented an earlier release.
He added the fighters got a cell-phone call every morning from their Taliban leadership, waking them up when it was time to pray.
"They had the best photo camera cell phones," Blechschmidt said. "They showed us a video clip in which they cut an American’s throat. Because they don’t take prisoners, ‘We can’t take them with us,’ they said."
Some of the Taliban wanted to move the German hostage to Helmand province, a sure death sentence.
Blechschmidt and his contact in the German special unit over the next days tried to convince the Afghan leadership, including President Hamid Karzai, to release the men in exchange for the hostages. But because of previous releases that had troubled Karzai, the president was unwilling to give in. Looming pressure from the German media (Blechschmidt called a radio station in Bavaria from a Taliban cell phone and told his story, which would have been aired after he hadn’t called for another two days), and a call from the German chancellor to Karzai, however, facilitated the final, successful prisoner exchange. After 84 days in captivity, Rudolf Blechschmidt was free at last.
Powered by ScribeFire.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment