UK – Daily Mail, April 05, 2025
A British pensioner held hostage for more than nine weeks by the Taliban has described his torment inside Afghanistan‘s most notorious prison as ‘the nearest thing to hell I can imagine’.
Peter Reynolds, 79, speaking from a payphone inside Pul-e-Charkhi maximum security jail in Kabul, also voiced his fears for his 76-year-old wife Barbie, who is being held in the prison’s women’s quarters.
‘I’ve been joined up with rapists and murderers by handcuffs and ankle cuffs, including a man who killed his wife and three children, shouting away, a demon-possessed man,’ he said.
Mr Reynolds said his circumstances – ‘a cage rather than a cell’ – were ‘VIP conditions’ compared with those in for the women. He said he had lost weight thanks to a single meal a day, usually nan bread and chickpeas with green tea for breakfast.
‘The atmosphere is pretty shocking. I am learning a lot about the underbelly of Afghanistan. The prison guards shout all the time and beat people with a piece of piping. It’s a horrible atmosphere — the nearest thing to hell I can imagine.’
