Afghan Captors Release Japan Reporter  09/05 08:57

   TOKYO (AP) -- A Japanese journalist who was abducted by apparent Taliban 
militants in Afghanistan five months ago has been freed by his captors, reports 
said Sunday.

   Kosuke Tsuneoka, a freelance journalist and veteran of war zones, was 
released Saturday night in good health and was at the Japanese Embassy in 
Kabul, Kyodo News agency cited government sources as saying. Japan's Foreign 
Ministry and its embassy in the Afghan capital declined to comment.

   Tsuneoka's mother told Kyodo that her 41-year-old son had called home from 
the embassy after being released in the Dasht-e-Archi district of Kunduz 
province.

   Tsuneoka's captors apparently decided to release him because he is a fellow 
Muslim, Kyodo said.

   According to his personal website, Tsuneoka converted to the religion in 
2000 while in Moscow.

   Tsuneoka had been missing since April 1, when he posted a message on Twitter 
saying he had traveled to a Taliban-controlled area in northern Afghanistan. 
Friends later received word that he had been kidnapped.

   Hopes for his release grew over the weekend after two new messages in 
English suddenly emerged on his Twitter account. He assured his followers that 
he was alive and in jail in Kunduz. It was not clear how or why the messages 
were sent.

   This isn't the first time Tsuneoka has been abducted. He went missing in 
Georgia in 2001 and was held for several months by unidentified individuals, 
according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. He was freed during a 
Georgian military operation.

   Tsuneoka is the latest of more than half a dozen foreign journalists 
kidnapped in Afghanistan, including two French reporters who were seized last 
December in Kapisa province just outside Kabul.

   On Sunday, the French government said it had received proof in the last 10 
days that the France-3 television reporters, Stephane Taponier and Herve 
Ghesquiere, are alive and in good health. It said negotiations for their 
release were interrupted during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, but were set 
to resume once it ends in a few days.

   A New York Times reporter, David Rohde, escaped last year along with an 
Afghan colleague seven months after being kidnapped while interviewing 
insurgents in the eastern province of Logar. The pair, along with their Afghan 
driver, were held in numerous compounds in Afghanistan and Pakistan while their 
captors dithered over a ransom.

   Shortly after Rohde's escape, another New York Times reporter, Stephen 
Farrell, and his Afghan translator were kidnapped by Taliban insurgents in 
Kunduz. The British-Irish Farrell was rescued soon after in a raid by British 
commandos in which the translator and a British commando were killed.

   In October, 2008, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter Mellissa Fung was 
seized at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul. She was released four weeks 
later after being held in a pit, chained and blindfolded. Around that time, 
Dutch journalist Joanie de Rijke was held for a week after being seized in the 
Surobi area east of Kabul.


(CZ)