Afghanistan Taliban free ICRC staff
Taliban militants in Afghanistan have released four members of the Swiss-run International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who were kidnapped on Wednesday.
A Taliban spokesman said the expatriates from Myanmar and Macedonia plus two locals had been seized southwest of Kabul by mistake and were freed as soon as it was verified they were ICRC employees.
“Our Mujahideen detained the Red Cross workers in the Wardak province without knowing they were ICRC staff. We have nothing against the Red Cross,” a Taliban spokesman told Reuters news agency.
The four aid workers were trying to help secure the release of a German held by criminals in July and later handed over to Taliban militias. They had declined the offer of a police escort.
They were themselves taken hostage “because of some suspicions”, the Taliban spokesman added.
The German engineer they were trying to free was abducted on July 18 along with a fellow countryman and five Afghans. The second German hostage was killed after he suffered a heart attack.
Local police said on Saturday they had no news about the fate of the surviving German.
Kidnappings escalate
“The unconditional release of our four colleagues is a great relief to us and their families,” said Franz Rauchenstein, deputy head of the ICRC delegation in Kabul.
A spokeswoman in Geneva added that the captors had never made any demands.
The number of kidnappings in the war-torn country has escalated in recent months after a captive Italian journalist was successfully used to secure the release of five insurgent prisoners in March.
In August the ICRC helped facilitate talks between the Taliban and South Korean officials that led to the release of 21 Korean hostages after more than a month of captivity.
The Swiss-run organisation deploys 60 expatriates and some 1,300 Afghan nationals in Afghanistan, one of its biggest operations worldwide.
Its officials visit several thousand detainees in Afghanistan each year to ensure that they are being treated humanely in accordance with international law.
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The ICRC’s main delegation is in Kabul, with sub-delegations in Herat, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif and Jalalabad.
It has 1,179 staff, including 62 expatriates, in the country.
Between January and June this year ICRC protection teams visited 68 places of detention, which were holding a total of 9,356 detainees. They provided assistance to 154 released detainees to travel home.
Since 1988 the ICRC has been involved in orthopaedic and rehabilitation assistance to disabled people, from landmine victims to those with motor impairment from other causes.
Around 78,200 patients (including more than 32,300 amputees) have been registered and assisted.
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