(RSF/IFEX) – British journalist Yvonne Ridley has been released and has left Afghanistan. According to the Pakistani authorities, the journalist, who was detained by the Taliban, crossed the Pakistani border freely on Monday 8 October 2001 at 7.30 p.m. (local time). On 8 October, a Pakistani official present at the border town of Torkham (fifty […]
(RSF/IFEX) – British journalist Yvonne Ridley has been released and has left Afghanistan. According to the Pakistani authorities, the journalist, who was detained by the Taliban, crossed the Pakistani border freely on Monday 8 October 2001 at 7.30 p.m. (local time).
On 8 October, a Pakistani official present at the border town of Torkham (fifty kilometres west of Peshawar) announced that journalist Ridley, a journalist with the “Sunday Express”, was released by the Taliban after spending ten days in detention. She crossed the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan that day at 7.30 p.m. The deputy chief of protocol for the Taliban Foreign Affairs Ministry accompanied the journalist to the border. There were no British officials awaiting her in Torkham. She is expected to be driven to Peshawar and Islamabad, where a representative of the “Daily Express” and British diplomats are staying. A few hours earlier, the British foreign affairs secretary asserted “having heard nothing about her.” The British authorities and Ridley’s family feared that the start of American and British air strikes in Afghanistan could have compromised her release from the country.
