A Frenchman held hostage for more than four months in Afghanistan by suspected members of the Taliban has told how his malnourished state eventually allowed him to make an unlikely escape, reports France 24.
Pierre Borghi, a 29-year-old aid worker and photographer, was bundled into a car by four men as he walked through an area of Kabul popular with expats on the night of November 27.
In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro published last week, Borghi, from Grenoble in southeast France, described how he was taken first to a house, where he enjoyed relative comfort and even established a cordial relationship with his guards, with whom he practised his Dari – the local language – and played card games.
However, after several days in the house, he was blindfolded and taken to a nearby barn, where his kidnappers - who Borghi believes to have been members of the Taliban - forced him into a hole dug out of the earth and closed with a wooden trap door.
This small hole would become Borghi’s home for the next three months. The Frenchman was only allowed out to film occasional ransom videos with his kidnappers - not otherwise permitted to leave even to wash or go to the toilet, his ankles and wrists kept in chains.
Borghi survived on meager rations of a plate of rice and a piece of bread a day, losing 12kg of weight, and his physical condition grew worse as the winter arrived.
“The winter was long and cold, and I was hungry,” said Borghi. “At the end, I was in really bad shape.”
Read more of this report from France 24.