US confirms freed Taliban hostages on German soil

FRANKFURT AM MAIN: Two Western hostages held for three years by the Taliban in Afghanistan landed in Germany Thursday after a prisoner exchange two days earlier, a US diplomat confirmed.

American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks landed overnight at the US Air Force´s Ramstein airbase in western Germany, and will be staying nearby “for a period of evaluation and reintegration”, the US official said. King and Weeks, both professors at the American University in Kabul, were kidnapped by gunmen wearing military uniforms in the heart of the Afghan capital in August 2016. American ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell told Fox News he had greeted the former hostages off the plane and handed King a US flag. “It´s one of the most emotional things that I get to do... to represent (President Donald Trump) and the American people and have this moment with a freed hostage where I say, we never forgot about you,” Grenell said.

He added that the exchange was a sign of “the power of diplomacy”, and thanked the Afghan government for its role in the swap for three high-ranking insurgent prisoners. “We got them back!” Trump tweeted later Thursday. Washington, Kabul and insurgent leaders have hailed the swap as an important step in peace negotiations for war-torn Afghanistan. One of the men released in exchange for the Westerners was Anas Haqqani, brother of the Taliban´s deputy leader.

Meanwhile, the European Union has more than doubled its emergency aid for Afghanistan to 77 million euros this year because of “the worsening humanitarian situation,” a European Commission spokeswoman said Thursday. The extra 40 million euros ($44 million) allocated will go to emergency healthcare, shelter, water and protection for children and women, a Commission statement said. Around 80 percent of the total aid goes directly to Afghanistan, with the rest split between neighbouring Iran and Pakistan, which together host six million Afghan refugees. “Not only has the conflict between the government and non-state armed groups intensified since the beginning of the year, but devastating floods have also hit this war-torn country,” said the EU’s commissioner for humanitarian aid, Christos Stylianides.