Spokesman Youssef Ahmadi told the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network that the group
had not received "any cash" and claimed the reports were part of a campaign to "discredit" the Taliban.
An official in South Korea’s presidential office also said on Saturday, September 1, that his government will "deny any payment for the release of South Korean" hostages. "The two conditions for the release are that we pull out our troops and stop Korean missionary work in Afghanistan by the end of the year," the official, who declined to be named, told Al Jazeera.
However one Taliban commander earlier told the Reuters news agency the 20 million US dollars had been received and would be used to "purchase arms, get our communication network renewed and buy vehicles for carrying out more suicide attacks". The source, reportedly on the 10-man leadership council of the group, said: "We got more than $20 million from them [the Seoul government]," Reuters reported.
RECEIVING CASH
Al Jazeera said it learned from several sources that the cash had been received. "It is in the interests of both the Afghan government and the Taliban to deny reports of a ransom. But Al Jazeera has been told by more than one source on more than one occasion, one of them a senior figure in the Taliban, that a ransom, said to be around $20m, has been paid," said the network’s Kabul Correspondent Alan Fisher in comments published on the Al Jazeera website.
Reports about the alleged payments were expected to highlight controversy surrounding the South Korean Christians. The South Korean government claimed they traveled illegally to Afghanistan, however the hostages’ Saemmul Presbyterian Church in Bundang, near Seoul, stressed they were Christian volunteers wanting to help people suffering in the war-torn nation.
The decision to speak with the Taliban was expected to strain relations between South Korea and the United States, which has refused to talk with what it calls a "terrorist organization."
Yet, Song Min-Soon, the South Korean foreign minister, said the country had no choice about negotiating with the Afghan group while the lives of the 19 remaining hostages were at stake. "We have to wish you to remember that innocent people were kidnapped and two of them were killed," he said in a statement to reporters.
GOVERNMENT STRUGGLING
"The government struggled to strike a balance between the international norms and custom concerning this kind of issue and the absolute premise that we have to save the people’s lives," he explained.
The 19 visibly traumatized South Koreans left Kabul late Friday, August 31, on a UN-chartered plane for Dubai from where they were to catch another flight for the final leg of their journey home. They were expected to arrive in Seoul early Sunday, September 2, local time. Two other kidnapped women were released earlier, but two male hostages did not survive the six-week ordeal.
The group’s 42-year-old leader Bae Hyun-kyu, a youth pastor at the hostages’ home church, and fellow Christian missionary, Shim Sung Min, who was 29, were both killed by the Taliban.The nineteen remaining hostages only learned of their killings after they were released.
In South Korea, anxious family members prepared Saturday, September 1, to reunite with traumatized loved ones. Television footage of the freed hostages broadcast Friday raised concerns about their health and the possible effect media exposure could have on their fragile emotional state, said Cha Seong-min, who has represented family members since the crisis began.
VERY CONCERNED
"I’m very much concerned because she looked like she lost a lot of weight," Cha said of his sister, Hye-jin, in remarks to reporters. "Some other relatives wept," Cha said. "In the case of Ms. Suh Myung-hwa, her family members looked very uneasy, with their eyeballs moving back and forth very quickly" while watching the TV images.
Suh, 29, and another former hostage, 55-year-old Yoo Kyung-sik, held a news conference with South Korean media in their hotel in the Afghan capital, Kabul. They recounted details of the group’s ordeal.
Suh showed reporters a pair of white trousers she wore during captivity. On the inside of the pants, she had written about their movements, meal times and other details – including Korean food she had longed for. Millions of Christians around the world have been praying for their release, estimated the World Council of Churches. (With BosNewsLife’s Eric Leijenaar and Stefan J. Bos).
