Month: August 2007

Lee Jee-young, 32, wrote a note to her parents which was passed on by the two female hostages freed earlier this month. She told her parents that she was faring well, healthy, eating well, and wasn’t sick.

‘There is officially no deal reached yet,’ state news agency Yonhap and KBS radio quoted a senior official with the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade as saying.

A foreign ministry spokesman meanwhile said press reports of an agreement could not be confirmed, but added that contact with the kidnappers was being maintained and all efforts were being made to secure the release of the 19.

KBS had earlier quoted Afghan press reports saying Taliban and South Korean negotiators had reached agreement via Saudi Arabian mediation, and that an official announcement to that effect was to be made Sunday.

Reports said the terms of the agreement included a commitment by South Korea to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan within weeks, as well as for all South Korean aid workers to leave the country.

The announcement followed the resumption of negotiations which had been on hold for two weeks after the Korean side said it was unable to meet the kidnappers’ chief demand to release Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government in exchange for the hostages, most of them women.

“The Taliban agreed to free the 19 South Korean hostages on the condition that South Korea withdraws its troops within this year and halt missionary activities,” the Blue House statement said.

The government had in any case decided before the hostage crisis to pull out its small contingent of engineers and medical staff from Afghanistan by the end of the year.

And since the hostages were taken it has banned its nationals from traveling to the war-torn country.

Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan will on Wednesday start releasing 19 South Korean Christian volunteers kidnapped nearly six weeks ago, a representative of the group said.

“Our decision is today,” said Qari Mohammad Bashir who was also involved in the talks with a Korean team on the release of the hostages. “We are trying to start the work today.”

The charge is failing to comply with a mandatory registration requirement. The church flock in Khalkabad near Pap in the eastern Namangan Region of Uzbekistan was harassed four years ago for not registering its activities with authorities.

Uzbekistan is in Central Asia, north of Afghanistan.

Local Baptists told Forum 18 News Service that police raided Sunday services on July 29 and August 5. Following the raids, church member Nikolai Zulfikarov – who hosts services in his home – could face criminal trial with a possible sentence of up to five years imprisonment.

Baptists told Forum 18 that an investigation was initiated against Zulfikarov under Article 216 of the Criminal Code, which punishes so-called “illegal organization of a social or religious organization.”

Charges are also reportedly being prepared against others present at the services, as well as Baptists from the city of Fergana who traveled to Pap to try and find out what is going on.

“The authorities wanted to sentence Nikolai Zulfikarov immediately, but after church members complained the process stopped,” one Baptist speaking on condition of anonymity told Forum 18. “There’s now total silence, but it is not clear if this means they will abandon the attempt or if they are moving stealthily behind the scenes.”

According to Forum 18, the head of the Pap District Criminal Investigation Department, Abdumalik Motboev, is leading the investigation into Zulfikarov and four other church members. An official who answered Motboev’s telephone and declined to give his name, confirmed to Forum 18 that a criminal case has been launched against Zulfikarov. However, the official said he did not know the details of the case.

Three South Korean women were released first, and later five — four women and a man — handed over to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Ghazni province, Reuters witnesses said.

Wearing long, traditional headscarves, the three women who were first to be freed wept as they sat in an ICRC vehicle.

Taliban representative Qari Mohammad Bashir, who was involved in the negotiations that led to the agreement to free the Koreans, told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency he hoped all would be free in two or three days.

However, South Korea had already decided before the crisis to withdraw its contingent of about 200 engineers and medical staff from Afghanistan by the end of 2007. Since the hostages were taken it has banned its nationals from traveling there.

A spokesman for South Korea’s president, Chon Ho-seon, did not respond to questions at a news briefing in Seoul on Wednesday on whether a ransom was part of the deal but said South Korea had done what was needed.

“We believe it is any country’s responsibility to respond with flexibility to save lives as long as you don’t depart too far from the principles and practice of the international community,” Chon said.

[…]

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said by telephone he expected all of the hostages to be free by Thursday.