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AFGHANISTAN

Freed French hostage ‘no regrets’ after toilet ordeal

Charles Ballard left a career in finance to do aid work in Afghanistan. Back home in France after being held hostage for 71 days in a toilet, he says he has no regrets.

Freed French hostage 'no regrets' after toilet ordeal
Charles Ballard, a former hostage in Afghanistan poses in Paris. Photo: Francois Guillot/AFP

On January 27, the finance director in Kabul for French charity ACTED (the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development) was kidnapped in broad daylight while being driven from home to the office.

A Japanese sedan intercepted Ballard's four-wheel drive. Three masked men jumped out. "I didn't have time to know what was happening. I already had automatic guns 30 centimetres from my face," he said.

The 28-year-old graduate of ESSEC, one of the most prestigious business schools in France who worked for two years as a banker in Hong Kong, kept his cool.

"I felt enormous fear but I didn't panic," he told AFP from Paris in an interview over Skype.

Two and a half weeks after his release, Ballard says he is not suffering any particular trauma, but he went through a violent ordeal.

His captors beat him on the first day. Then he was moved to a second location where he was held for 70 days.

The entire time he was kept in a squat toilet, a room smaller than three square metres "with no access to daylight or any reference point" only a naked light bulb kept on 24 hours a day non-stop.

He slept, curled up like a dog on a small, thin mattress next to the lavatory. He was fed irregularly, once or twice a day.

Ballard says he did what physical exercise he could in the tiny space and managed to wash in a small basin.

"I did memory exercises. I made completely absurd lists of people who were in my class when I was in sixth grade, I repeated my times tables," he said.

"After several days, I fixed myself on the medium term. I told myself that I needed to do everything to control my emotions, that I couldn't let black thoughts or depression take over."

He declined to discuss details of his release or who his captors may have been.

Ballard says he never knew French ex-aid worker turned photographer Pierre Borghi, kidnapped for four months, held separately in Afghanistan and released just one day earlier, but that since their release they have spoken on Facebook.

Ballard now plans to work for ACTED in Paris after a long holiday and to "resume normal life". And he is not ruling out a return to Afghanistan.

"I don't have a mental block against this country," he said. And what about his old life of high finance in Hong Kong, a life of certainty with no danger of being kidnapped. "I don't regret the choices I've made, even now."

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AFGHANISTAN

Spain starts evacuating Afghan employees via Pakistan

Spain was on Monday evacuating via Pakistan Afghan helpers left behind when western forces quit Kabul, a government source confirmed on condition of anonymity.

A group of Afghan nationals stand on the tarmac after disembarking from the last Spanish evacuation flight at the Torrejon de Ardoz air base near Madrid in August. Photo: PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU / AFP)
A group of Afghan nationals stand on the tarmac after disembarking from the last Spanish evacuation flight at the Torrejon de Ardoz air base near Madrid in August. Photo: PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU / AFP)

The government source declined to give any details of the move, citing security concerns.

But Spanish media, including daily El País and National Radio, reported that Madrid would bring close to 250 Afghan citizens, who had already crossed into Pakistan and would be flown out on military transport planes.

The first flight was expected to arrive on Monday evening.

Spain’s evacuations have been weeks in the making, with Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares visiting Pakistan and Qatar in early September to lay the groundwork.

Madrid evacuated over 2,000 people, most of them Afghans who had worked for Spain and their families, during the western withdrawal as the Taliban seized power in Kabul in August.

But the flights had to stop once the final American troops that had been protecting the Afghan capital’s airport left.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said in August that Spain would not “lose interest in the Afghans who had remained” in their country but wanted to leave.

The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, on Friday urged the bloc’s member states to host a “minimum” of between 10,000 and 20,000 more Afghan refugees.

“To welcome them, we have to evacuate them, and we’re getting down to it, but it’s not easy,” he said in Madrid.

The EU has said a demand by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to take in 42,500 Afghan refugees over five years can be achieved — although any decision lies with member states.

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