Freed Aussie Robert Langdon’s debt to US lawyer Kimberley Motley

Without US lawyer Kimberley Motley, former Australian soldier Robert Langdon would still be locked in an Afghan jail.

Kimberley Motley is a tough ­African-American lawyer, the first foreigner to be licensed to practise law in Afghanistan, and without her, former Australian soldier Robert Langdon would still be locked in an Afghan jail.

Instead, yesterday he was in a car cruising along beside the Spencer Gulf, from Adelaide to his hometown of Port Augusta, with Ms Motley, a former Miss Wisconsin, at the wheel.

Mr Langdon was breathing in the salty air, gazing to the horizon — he hadn’t seen one in more than seven years — and lapping up the surrounds; like an excited kelpie on the back of a ute, the sights and the smells of freedom must have been almost overpowering.

His life, a little more than a week ago, was unbearably grim; he was locked in a tiny cell in Kabul’s Pul-e-Charkhi prison, a place that was described to The Australian as being “the worst place on Earth to be a white man”. And he was the only white man in there — the last Western prisoner in an Afghan jail.

His release came as a result of Ms Motley’s legal battles and lobbying by Australian consular officials in Kabul of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and the man with whom he shares power, Afghanistan’s Chief Executive, Abdullah Abdullah.

Among Mr Langdon’s fellow prisoners were al-Qa’ida and Taliban fighters who hated him because he was a Westerner, and despised him even more because he had been a soldier and a ­security contractor who had worked with US forces in ­Afghanistan.

He was sentenced to death in 2009 for the murder of an ­Afghan security contractor, a man named Karimullah, a crime he has maintained was committed in self-defence. It was made worse by the claim he tried to cover up the crime by throwing a hand grenade into a vehicle where Karimullah’s body lay, in an attempt to make it appear as though it were a Taliban attack.

He was arrested at Kabul ­airport on the day of the killing as he was about to leave the country.

Mr Langdon claimed the victim had reached for his pistol during a confrontation. “He reached across, and I am ex-military, so it was like bang, bang, bang, bang,” he told an Afghan court. “I didn’t have time to think.”

Mr Langdon appealed against the court’s original death sentence but the appeal court judge, Abdul Salam Qazizada, said the cold-blooded nature of the murder, and the fact he had tried to cover it up, justified the sentence.

“Robert Langdon opened the door of the car where (the victim) was sitting and shot him in the head,” Judge Qazizada said.

In prison, Mr Langdon was under constant threat of violence and was regularly attacked. During his final months in jail, he used a padlock to lock himself in a stinking cell. He had a smuggled mobile phone and a knife he had fashioned from a piece of steel.

And then, a little over a week ago, Ms Motley turned up at the jail on the eastern outskirts of Kabul. The President had pardoned him for the crime of murder. “Right Rob,” Ms Motley told him. “It’s time to go.”

Together they walked through the prison gates, and he then went into hiding, at her house in Kabul, until the necessary documents could be obtained to leave the country.

Not a word of it was leaked, in case there was some last-minute glitch, or protests from Afghans angry at his release.

Was there a sense that he couldn’t quite believe it was happening? “Yeah, I would say that is accurate,” Ms Motley said.

On Tuesday night he flew into Adelaide to be greeted by his parents, Peter and Noreen, sister Katie Godfrey and his niece. It was the first time he had seen his family in eight years. “I don’t even know what was said,” Ms Motley said. “I stepped back and let them do their thing. I don’t think there were a lot of words, I think there was a lot of hugging.”

Ms Godfrey told The Australian that having her brother back home “feels good, just beyond happy”. She said she never believed Mr Langdon was going to die in ­Afghanistan despite ­initially being sentenced to death. “That was never going to happen, I didn’t entertain that at all, I honestly didn’t.”

Noreen Langdon felt the same. “He was always coming home, there was no doubt in my mind,” she said.

Peter Langdon wasn’t so optimistic about seeing his son again. “I thought, well, if he gets home, he gets home … you can’t have too much hope in this world.”

After the reunion, they went to a hotel. “We checked in at some place near the airport in Adelaide,” Ms Motley said. “It was called the Queen something.”

It must have seemed like a palace to Mr Langdon.

Most Australians locked up overseas have regular visits from consular officials, but Mr Langdon’s situation was different because in recent years it was deemed too dangerous for Australian embassy officials to travel to Pul-e-Charkhi prison.

However, they were in regular telephone contact with him and would send him food packages. Australia’s former ambassador to Afghanistan, Matthew Anderson — who has just returned to Australia from his posting in Kabul — last spoke to Mr Langdon on Anzac Day. “I said we were continuing to do everything we could to encourage the Afghan government to agree to his release, but there was no timeline I was working to,” Mr Anderson said. “I wanted to assure him we were doing everything we could and he hadn’t been forgotten.”

In recent years, Mr Langdon had very few visitors. Ms Motley called in regularly, braving the dangerous route to the prison.

“She’s a formidable woman,” said Mr Anderson. “A very ­important part of consular work is the pastoral care, the Western face, the psychological thing of not being forgotten. Kimberley kept going down there and calling on him when we stopped being able to.”

Ms Motley in turn had high praise for the Australians. “It was a very strong collaborative effort with obviously my help, the Australian embassy and the Afghan government and it couldn’t have happened without everyone working very co-operatively with one another,” she said.

Mr Anderson said: “Everyone in the Afghan government was of the view that it was an anomaly having a Westerner out there in Pul-e-Charkhi prison.” Afghan officials were keen to do whatever they could, in accordance with the law. “That was the case throughout, I didn’t meet any resistance at all,” Mr Anderson said. “I think it was a recognition of the strength of the bilateral relationship. Australia’s made a significant investment in Afghanistan and I think it was a recognition of that.”

Ms Motley said the case was particularly complex because the Afghan government felt it needed to change a law in order to allow for Mr Langdon’s release. That amended law, which was passed in June, says if a country has a good relationship with Afghanistan a prisoner can be extradited.

The law was changed specifically for Mr Langdon. Ms Motley then filed a petition to the presidential palace and Mr Ghani granted clemency.

“I’m glad they showed compassion,” she said. “I’m glad that they followed the law and, frankly, with or without this law, it’s up to the President’s discretion, ­according to Afghan law, to afford the pardon. ­Obviously from my perspective he made the right ­decision.”

Mr Langdon’s Australian lawyer, Stephen Kenny, said he ­received a call this week from a former military officer in Afghanistan. The officer said Mr Langdon had passed on to officials information he had heard in jail.

“(He) wanted it to be known particularly that information that Robert had passed on had saved a considerable number of lives,” said Mr Kenny. He said Mr Langdon had served in the Australian Army in East Timor and Solomon Islands and had a proud record of serving in Afghanistan before the shooting.

Mr Langdon has no specific plans for now, other than to spend time with his family.