Two French journalists held hostage in Afghanistan for 18 months have spoken of the boredom and claustrophobia of their confinement, as the Taliban said they had been freed in exchange for imprisoned militant leaders.
Hervé Ghesquière and Stéphane Taponier landed at an airbase near Paris on Thursday after one of France's longest hostage ordeals. Ghesquière, a seasoned war reporter, and Taponier, a cameraman, told how they had been kept in the mountainous province of Kapisa after being seized at a roadblock 40 miles east of Kabul while filming in December 2009.
The journalists said they had been locked up for "23 hours and 45 minutes a day" with just two short toilet breaks morning and evening, because of the paranoia of the Taliban, who did not want locals to see them. Barred or covered windows meant they saw little sunlight.
The men, who looked pale and thin, said they were well treated and never beaten or tied up, but they described living conditions as "very, very difficult". Le Parisien reported that they did not have a proper shower for a year and a half.
Ghesquière described how they were initially held together in a small room with their interpreter, but then separated for eight months.
Taponier added: "The worst thing is saying to yourself: what am I going to do with the day? It's 8am, we're going to have to live without doing anything until 10pm. Nothing to read."
He did three hours' exercise a day, while Ghesquière did 45 minutes, in order to deal with stress.
The men said they obsessed about food. "We didn't have much to eat and it was always the same thing," Ghesquière said. "When you have nothing to do, you really live for eating."
Ghesquière wrote a diary but the Taliban took his 18 months' worth of notebooks before he was freed.
A spokesman for the Afghan Taliban said that Paris failed to free the journalists "by force and power" and that the men were finally traded for insurgent fighters. The Taliban did not say who released the fighters or where they were held.
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