The elderly couple held for nearly eight months by the Taliban have said they feared never being released – or even being executed.
Peter and Barbie Reynolds finally flew back to the UK at the weekend after intense diplomatic efforts led by Qatar.
They were detained in ten jails, including the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi where they were sometimes held in a cage or a windowless basement – but they never learned why they were arrested.
‘We had begun to think that we would never be released or that we were even being held until we were executed,’ Mr Reynolds, 80, said.
‘The last few months, we have been together in solitary confinement, cut off from all awareness of what was going on in the world.’
His 76-year-old wife added they were not even informed they were being freed as they were taken to their flight out on Friday.
‘They told us nothing. Even when we were taken to Kabul airport, we thought maybe we were just flying somewhere for medical treatment,’ she told The Sunday Times.
The couple from Bath became besotted with Afghanistan as students and married there in 1970.
Peter and Barbie Reynolds, held for nearly eight months by the Taliban, have said they feared never being released – or even being executed (pictured: Peter with daughter Sarah Entwistle)
They moved there in 2007 and set up Rebuild, which runs training courses for schools, businesses and NGOs – and remained even when the Taliban seized power in 2021.
They were detained by the interior ministry on February 1 near their home in Bamian.
Mr Reynolds insisted no ransom should be paid to secure their freedom.
‘Ecstatic’ Sarah Entwistle, one of the couple’s four children, said on Sunday: ‘I was beginning to think we would never see this moment.’
