November 01, 2007

Freed German Hostage Recalls 84 Days of Hell With Taliban

German engineer Rudolf Blechschmidt, who was recently freed after spending nearly three months of captivity in Afghanistan, describes his kidnapping by the Taliban and gives an insight into the corruption and violence still prevalent in that country. Via UPI:

On Wednesday, German news magazine Stern published an exclusive interview with Blechschmidt, which for the first time detailed what had really happened in the Afghan mountains.

In the interview the 62-year-old accused Afghan police of complicity in 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.

"They hit me with the rifle on the back of the head, several times, really hard," Blechschmidt remembered. "My scalp was cut to the ears, and I had a concussion."

He describes how Diedrich struggled to keep up with the demanding climb through the mountains with little water, and how he was murdered when he fell ill:

"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.

"I hated these people. I told myself, when I have to die, I’ll take a few with me, they were all packed with hand grenades, and I only needed to grab one and pull the trigger," he said.

After a botched ransom and prisoner exchange operation, in which Blechschmidt says the Afghan intelligence officers kept the ransom payment and tried to dupe the Taliban with low-quality prisoners, the German government intervened and finally freed him and his five Afghan co-workers.

Thank God he was able to survive, and hopefully his kidnappers will meet the same fate as Mullah Dadullah and the thugs who kidnapped Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo and beheaded his colleagues Sayad Agha and Adjmal Nakshbandi. Please continue to pray for the hostages still being held captive in Iraq and Gaza, and pray for the day when aid workers, journalists, and others can do their jobs without being in constant fear for their lives.

H/t George