Afghanistan | Tuesday
BRITISH journalist Yvonne Ridley spoke late on Monday of her delight at being freed by her Taliban captors — and her desperation to return home to see her daughter Daisy.
After crossing the Afghanistan border into Pakistan, the 43-year-old Sunday Express reporter told Sky News: ”I’m fine, it’s good to be here. They (the Taliban) treated me with respect and courtesy.”
The Associated Press reports that Ridley embarked on a hunger strike during her 10 days of detention, and huddled in her cell as military strikes pounded Kabul.
Ridley wrote in the Daily Express that she had refused food after being denied the use of a telephone, AP said.
”Hunger strike was the only weapon I had. I thought I was going to die. I was very very scared,” she wrote in the newspaper.
”When the nighttime wave of attacks on Kabul started I was lying in bed and it was like fireworks being set off … I could see everything quite clearly, the tracers going up and the explosions,” she said.
”I admitted going in without a visa,” Ridley wrote, defending her illegal entry into Afghanistan.
”It was not a silly stunt, I was trying to find out what Afghans thought about the situation,” said AP.
Ridley said she had been held in a cell with six of the eight international aid workers, who are accused of trying to convert Afghans to Christianity.
”Those women just had a tremendous inner strength,” she wrote.
Days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Taliban had ordered all foreign reporters to leave the country. Taliban authorities had also accused Ridley of being a spy.
Members of the Taliban handed over Ridley to Pakistani officials and that she had been met by British diplomats.
Television pictures showed Ridley apparently in good health and spirits as she climbed from a car. – Sapa-AFP