New York Times reporter David Rohde escapes captivity in Afghanistan

As a Christian Science Monitor reporter, Mr. Rohde was captured by Bosnian Serb police while covering atrocities in Serbia.

By Peter Grier | Staff writer 06.20.09

David Rohde, a New York Times reporter held captive by the Taliban for more than seven months, has escaped by scaling a wall and fleeing the compound where he was being held in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, the Times announced on June 20.

Mr. Rohde and Tahir Ludin, a local journalist, were abducted along with their driver Asadullah Mangal outside Kabul on November 10, according to the Times. Rohde was working on a book about the American involvement in Afghanistan, and was traveling to what he believed to be a pre-arranged interview with a Taliban commander.

Mr. Ludin escaped along with Rohde, the Times quotes Rohde’s wife Kristen Mulvihill as saying.

The Times kept quiet about the kidnapping, as did other media outlets, in the belief that silence might increase the chances of his safe return. Many references to his work and even his personal life disappeared from the Internet.

Rohde shared in a Pulitzer Prize awarded the Times this May for its coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan last year, but remained uncredited until now.

Prior to his employment at the Times, Rohde was a staff correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor. He won a Pulitzer Prize — and many other journalistic awards — in 1996 for his work in documenting the massacre of Bosnian Muslims In Srebrenica.

Rohde was captured by Bosnian Serb police in 1995 while looking for evidence of the massacres, and jailed for ten days. He was freed shortly before the Dayton Accords, a peace agreement reached after multi-party negotiations at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton Ohio, largely settled the Bosnian conflict.

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Comments

1. Susan Craig | 06.20.09

that’s a relief. i am sure he will have some story to tell and i hope that he does tell it.

2. Jim Bencivenga | 06.20.09

Way to do David!!!

3. Stephen C. Rose | 06.20.09

This is incredibly good news both for his friends an family but for all who experienced this and feared the worst.

4. S. Saunders | 06.21.09

So the TIMES accknowledges that exploiting and sensationalizing captives endagers the captive. So in regards one of their own the Times uses common sense? What if it would have been a soldier or anybody else, Robert Durant….The hypocracy is appalling.

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