Missing Japanese journalist under protection of Kabul embassy

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KABUL, Sept. 5 Kyodo -
A Japanese freelance journalist missing since late March, who Afghan
authorities said had been detained by insurgents in the north of country, has
been released and is under the protection of the Japanese Embassy in Kabul,
Japanese government sources said Sunday.
Kosuke Tsuneoka, 41, was freed Saturday and was in good health, the
Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency said, quoting a person who met
Tsuneoka on Saturday night shortly after his arrival in the Afghan capital.
A Taliban commander in Kunduz, the northern Afghan province where Tsuneoka was
last seen before he went missing, has claimed responsibility for holding the
journalist, AIP said.
''We treated him very well. He (Tsuneoka) would vouch for this,'' the commander
told AIP in an interview from his base in Kunduz.
In Tokyo, government sources said Tsuneoka received a medical checkup at the
Japanese Embassy and appeared to have no injuries.
Tsuneoka's mother, who lives in Shimabara, Nagasaki Prefecture, in southern
Japan, said her son had telephoned her from the Japanese Embassy in Kabul,
telling her that he had arrived at the embassy and met the Japanese ambassador.
According to AIP, Tsuneoka was released in the Dasht-e-Archi district of Kunduz.
Tsuneoka went missing in late March while traveling in Kunduz to interview
senior Taliban officials. On April 1, Tsuneoka's friends received a message
that he had been kidnapped.
AIP said the Japanese journalist was released because he is a Muslim and his
captors wanted him to celebrate Eid, the Islamic festival at the end of
Ramadan, with his family.
In June, Afghan security officials said Taliban militants had demanded the
Afghan government pay a ransom for Tsuneoka and that negotiations were under
way to pay several hundred thousand dollars in return for his release.
On Friday, two English-language messages posted on Twitter said Tsuneoka was
alive and was still being detained. They were the first messages posted on
Tsuneoka's Twitter account since April 1.
A former radio reporter, Tsuneoka had been covering war-related stories as a
freelance journalist, traveling to war zones in Afghanistan, Ethiopia and
elsewhere.
According to Tsuneoka's personal website, he is interested in reporting ''war
stories from the standpoint of people who are vulnerable to war'' and had
visited war zones while he was a student at Waseda University.
==Kyodo
2010-09-05 21:52:39