Peshawar: A Taliban official, Ustad Mohmmad Yasir, in a fresh interview, admits the group had freed 19 South Korean Christian volunteers after receiving payment.
There were some reports in media that this was a multi-million dollar business, but the Taliban and the South Korean and Afghan governments officially had denied these reports and many times they had said that the hostages were released without any payment to the Taliban.
Ustad Mohammad Yasir is a senior official of the Taliban who was arrested by Pakistani intelligence forces in 2005 and then was handed over to the Afghan government but was exchanged for the Italian journalist Daniel Mastrogiacomo in March 2007. Now he is the head of information of the Taliban.
His exclusive interview is published in a latest issue of monthly Pashto journal ‘Afaaq’ from Peshawar. This detailed interview contains many questions and answers about a variety of topics. The question and answer about Korean hostages goes thus:
Question: You mentioned the Christian missionaries. Taliban took some Korean missionaries as hostages and then released them for money. Does Islam and Afghan culture allow this?
Answer: The problem was that many of them were women. Had we killed them or made them slaves then you would hear the cries of the world and also it was not beneficial to let them go for free. So it was the only good way to exchange them for money.
Taliban kidnapped the 23 South Korean volunteers from the Qarabagh district of Ghazni province. They killed two men and freed two women during the talking process and released the remaining 19 after a six-weak ordeal.