NYT : German and 5 Afghans Freed in Taliban Trade

German and 5 Afghans Freed in Taliban Trade

By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and KIRK SEMPLE | October 11, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 10 — A German engineer and five Afghans who were kidnapped by the Taliban in July were freed Wednesday in exchange for the release of five Taliban prisoners, said Mohammad Naiem, the governor of a district in Wardak Province.

The Taliban freed the engineer, Rudolf Blechschmidt, and the Afghans to government officials in Wardak, in central Afghanistan, after negotiations led by local tribal elders, Mr. Naiem said.

Among the released Taliban was the father of the Taliban commander thought to have organized Mr. Blechschmidt’s kidnapping, Afghan officials said. The Afghan government drew widespread criticism for a similar deal in March, when it agreed to free five Taliban prisoners to win the release of an Italian journalist, but then refused to make a similar deal for his Afghan interpreter. The interpreter was killed.

The government insisted at the time that the exchange was “a one-time deal.” Mr. Naiem said Wednesday that the freed Taliban were “not very important Taliban commanders,” Agence France-Presse reported.

Mr. Blechschmidt, the five Afghans and another German were kidnapped in July in Wardak, southwest of Kabul, and the Taliban said they would free them if Germany withdrew its more than 3,000 troops from Afghanistan.

The kidnappers killed the second German after he had a heart attack.

The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, released a statement on Wednesday hailing the release of Mr. Blechschmidt and saying that the freedom of the five Afghans was “a source of great relief to us.”

Asked whether the German government had pressed the Afghans to trade the prisoners for the hostages, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman declined to comment.

“In cases like that we don’t comment or go into detail on the work of the crisis team,” said the spokeswoman, Julia Gross. “We’ve never disclosed any details or commented on the work of the crisis team.”

Mr. Blechschmidt was abducted a day before Taliban insurgents kidnapped 23 South Koreans in Ghazni Province, which borders Wardak.

The rebels killed two of the South Koreans when the Afghan government refused to meet their demands for the release of Taliban prisoners.

The surviving South Koreans were freed in August after talks between the Taliban and the South Korean government. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Mr. Blechschmidt was released two days after he appeared on a video, appealing to the Afghan and German governments to negotiate with the militants to secure his release before winter. He said that he was in poor health but that an Afghan doctor had helped him.

In August, a video broadcast on Afghan television showed Mr. Blechschmidt slumped over and coughing, news services reported.

In September, the Taliban briefly kidnapped four employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross who had gone to Wardak to negotiate the release of Mr. Blechschmidt and the five Afghans.

Abdul Waheed Wafa reported from Kabul, and Kirk Semple from Mazar-i-Sharif. Nicholas Kulish contributed reporting from Berlin.