Australian professor Timothy Weekes was set to be freed by Taliban, now delayed
Timothy Weekes, a NSW teacher kidnapped by the Taliban in 2016, was due to be released under a prisoner swap but Afghanistan says that will now be reviewed.
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The exchange of three senior Taliban prisoners for two foreign hostages announced by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has been delayed, a spokesman said this morning.
The Taliban prisoners “are still being held by the Afghan government. The inability of the Taliban to meet the conditions has caused a delay in the exchange,” Mr Ghani’s spokesman Sediq Sediqqi wrote on Twitter.
The government “will review the exchange process in light of Afghanistan’s national interests,” he said, without providing further details.
Taliban sources said the group had moved the Westerners to a “new and safe place”.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Tuesday the government would release a leader of the Taliban’s Haqqani militant faction and two other commanders in exchange for the two university professors.
Timothy Weekes, 50, an English teacher from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales and Kevin King, from Pennsylvania, were abducted in 2016 outside the American University in Kabul where they both work as teachers.
The following year, the Taliban released two videos showing the captives.
A January 2017 video showed them appearing pale and gaunt.
In the later video, King and Weekes looked healthier and said a deadline for their release was set for June 16 that year.
Both said they are being treated well by the Taliban but that they remain prisoners and appealed to their governments to help set them free.
It was impossible to know whether they were forced to speak.
Subsequently, US officials said that American forces had launched a rescue mission to free the two, but the captives were not found at the raided location.
THE PRISONER SWAP
The deal was seen by the Afghan government as a key move in securing direct talks with the Taliban, which has hitherto refused to engage with what it calls an illegitimate “puppet” regime in Kabul.
But a diplomat said in Washington on Wednesday the exchange had not taken place. An Afghan government official told Reuters on Friday it had been postponed, without elaborating further, while Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid blamed the United States.
“It was a shortcoming from the American side the swap did not happen,” he said. Three Taliban sources, including a relative of prisoner Anas Haqqani, brother of the leader of the Haqqani network, said the commanders were due to be flown to Qatarto be freed but were returned to the jail in Bagram outside the Afghan capital Kabul.
“We spoke to them after they were provided with new clothes and shifted out of Bagram jail,” the relative said.
“They told us that they were being taken to the plane and we expected them to land in Doha and when it didn’t happen for several hours, we got suspicious.”
The sources said they had heard about the return of the prisoners to Bagram from Taliban prisoners in the jail and members of the Afghan security forces. The move had left the Taliban “astonished and hurt”, said one of the sources, who is familiar with the details of the prisoner exchange.
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“The deal was we would free them after our prisoners landed in Qatar,” said the third source familiar with the swap.
He said the Taliban had immediately shifted Professor Weeks and Professor King “to a new and safe place” on Tuesday after the commanders failed to land in Doha, home to the Taliban’s political leadership.
Taliban sources said they had no information why their prisoners had not been flown to Doha while spokesmen for the Afghan government and the US embassy in Kabul did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Australian government has said on Tuesday it will not provide a “running commentary” on the effort to release Prof Weeks.
AUSTRALIA PUSHED TO ACCEPT ISIS FIGHTERS
Meanwhile, Australia may be forced to accept three Islamic State fighters in Turkish custody as Ankara begins repatriating foreign fighters to their homelands. Turkey has so far sent up to 10 fighters back to Britain, the US and Germany, saying it cannot continue to house them, even as the governments have rejected taking their fighters back and have cancelled passports.
The Australians are among 959 foreign IS fighters and families in Turkish custody in northern Syria.
Turkey’s ambassador to Australia Korhan Karakoc told The Weekend Australian Ankara wants Canberra to co-ordinate the return of the men.
Efforts were under way to repatriate “a few” suspected Australian ISIS prisoners, whom Mr Karakoc was unable to identify. But he said Turkey wants the Australian government to co-ordinate their return.
“Turkey, at this stage, is not in a position to take a unilateral step because we have to co-ordinate, at the end of the day,” he said.
“It really requires some formalities. The Australian side should be willing to accept them.
“We certainly want to send them away so you can handle them here in their country. But it would take some time.” He also said the Australian government was reluctant to take the men back.
Originally published as Australian professor Timothy Weekes was set to be freed by Taliban, now delayed
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