Get the sequence:-
== Tankers ambushed by Taleban and get stuck
== German troops not available [? why ? were they on overtime? ] but they call for airstrike - it's easier and it passes the buck
== local Afghans go to tankers to ‘nick’ some free fuel and some of them and some Taleban get killed by bombs dropped
== Irish reporter working for American paper goes north from Kabul to investigate in local village and he and his Afghan interpreter are taken hostage by Taleban. [There are suggestions that he was British-Irish but that is not a nationality] . He is accident prone, foolishly putting himself in untenable positions and was earlier taken hostage in Iraq.
== news of kisdnapping kept from media while rescue planned using helicopters and British Special Forces detachment (and others?)
== Gordon Brown authorises use of Special Forces [to get good publicity for rescuing journalist?]
== rescue mission kills many Taleban, some civilians (who can tell which are which?) rescues Irish American-employed journalist but Afghan interpreter is killed and British soldier dies.
== Irish journalist first calls employer and afterwards his wife.
== Brown cashes in with nauseating statement about “one member of the British armed forces lost his life. His family has been informed, and our immediate thoughts are with them. His bravery will not be forgotten” ----”showed breathtaking heroism” --- “they are truly the finest among us, and all of us in Britain pay tribute to them, and to the families and communities who sustain them in their awesome responsibilities.”
What are we putting British lives at risk - and losing one - for an irresponsible hack, especially as the incident did not definitely involve a British subject, who was working for a foreign publication and whose national loyalty was in question. It’s Gordon Brown playing political games again.
Christina
THE TIMES 9.9.09
Gordon Brown ordered mission to free kidnapped reporter Stephen Farrell
Stephen Farrell, left, and his interpreter Mohammad Sultan Munadi, right, who was killed during the raid. They are with a man wounded in the Nato air strike in Kunduz
Michael Evans, Jerome Starkey and James Hider in Kabul
Gordon Brown approved a mission to rescue the British journalist Stephen Farrell in which a member of the Special Forces was killed this morning, The Times has learnt.
Plans for the raid, in which Farrell’s Afghan interpreter, a civilian and dozens of Taleban fighters were also killed, were drawn up by British Special Forces commanders in Kabul during a weekend of secret planning.
Lieutenant-General Jim Dutton, a Royal Marine and deputy commander of Nato’s International Security Assistance Force, headed the team and Mr Brown, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, were kept informed of what was being planned.
The Director Special Forces, a major-general who cannot be identified, has a direct phone link to the Prime Minister and would have informed Mr Brown in person of the risks involved. Whitehall sources confirmed that Mr Brown had given his approval for the rescue mission to go ahead.
A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "Ministers were kept informed throughout and supported the operation to secure the release of Mr Farrell."
Farrell, a New York Times journalist, was freed in the pre-dawn operation but his Afghan interpreter, Mohammad Sultan Munadi, was shot dead. A Taleban commander said that 48 of his men were killed in the raid, in which at least one civilian also died.
The pair were taken hostage by the Taleban on Saturday after travelling to the site of an air strike near Kunduz in which up to 125 people were killed.
Moments after this morning's raid Farrell phoned his American colleagues to say that he had been freed. He said: "We were all in a room, the Talebs all ran, it was obviously a raid. We thought they would kill us. We thought should we go out."
The two hostages ran outside. "There were bullets all around us. I could hear British and Afghan voices," he added.
Farrell said that Munadi went forward, shouting: "Journalist! Journalist!" but dropped in a hail of bullets. "I dived in a ditch," he said, adding that he did not know whether the shots had come from allied or militant fire.
After a minute or two, the dual Irish-British national who is a former Middle East correspondent for The Times, said that he heard more British voices and shouted: "British hostage!" The British voices told him to come over. As he did, he saw Munadi's body.
"He was lying in the same position as he fell," Mr Farrell said. "That’s all I know. I saw him go down in front of me. He did not move. He’s dead. He was so close, he was just two feet in front of me when he dropped."
The local Taleban commander who seized them, Shams ud-Din, was more brigand than ideologue, who had been in and out of jail for years before throwing in his lot with the Islamist guerrillas.
He had been attacking Nato supply convoys heading from Tajikistan, to the north, to Kabul to the south, including the hijacking of the petrol tankers. It was his men who heard the noise of approaching rotor blades and bolted for the door.
The Prime Minister, who was woken to hear news of the rescue, phoned the British commanders to thank the rescue team for its effort and pay tribute to the member of the Special Forces Support Group killed.
Mr Brown said in a statement: “It is with very deep sadness that I must also confirm that, while acting with the greatest of courage in this most dangerous mission, one member of the British armed forces lost his life.
"His family has been informed, and our immediate thoughts are with them. His bravery will not be forgotten.
“This operation was carried out after extensive planning and consideration. Those involved knew the high risks they were running. That they undertook it in such circumstances showed breathtaking heroism. I also want to thank the Afghan authorities and our Nato allies for their support.”
Mohammed Nabi, owner of the house which was raided, said that the troops left with Farrell, but not his Afghan colleague, whose body was found outside the house in the morning.
"Last night, a group of Taleban in two vehicles came to my house saying they needed shelter. We took them to our guest house. There was a foreign journalist and an Afghan translator with them," Mr Nabi told Reuters.
"At midnight, US helicopters came, dropping off soldiers. A clash broke out and then the soldiers blew open the door of my house, killing my sister-in-law, and took the reporter away with them."
Munadi had moved to Germany nine months ago to study journalism and had come to visit his family for Ramadan before returning. He had returned to work briefly at The New York Times, where he had worked before.
Efforts had been under way to negotiate both men’s release. Moen Marastial, an MP from the province, said: "We held a shura [council] on Sunday with 250 people to discuss the kidnapping and we asked people with links to the Taleban to send them a message.
"The men who kidnapped the journalists handed them over to a senior commander called Mullah Salaam. He sent us a message saying the men would be released, but that he was waiting for an order from his bosses. The deadline was yesterday."
Farrell, who was writing a war blog for The New York Times, made a brief call to his office at around 5am local time, telling fellow journalists: "I'm out. I'm free."
Farrell, 46, travelled to Kunduz from Kabul on Friday afternoon and spent the night in the provincial capital. On Saturday morning he and Mr Sultan set off for Metarlam District, four miles outside the city, where two Nato bombs had left up to 125 people dead, including dozens of civilians.
German troops called in the airstrikes on two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taleban at 2.30am on Friday morning. Scores of local people had swarmed around the vehicles, which were stuck on a riverbed, to siphon off free fuel.
While Farrell and Munadi were interviewing Afghans near the site of the bombing, an old man approached them and warned them to leave. Soon after, gunshots rang out and people shouted that the Taleban were approaching.0
Police had warned reporters who travelled to the capital of Kunduz that the village in question was controlled by the Taleban and it would be dangerous to go there.
There was a news blackout on the kidnap in an attempt to aid international efforts to secure the journalists’ release.
Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, said: "We feared that media attention would raise the temperature and increase the risk to the captives. We’re overjoyed that Steve is free, but deeply saddened that his freedom came at such a cost. We are doing all we can to learn the details of what happened. Our hearts go out to Sultan’s family."
Security officials had feared that they would be moved to Pakistan and handed over to al-Qaeda to be executed.
In June another New York Times reporter, David Rohde, escaped from an insurgent safehouse in Pakistan after seven months as a Taleban prisoner. Mr Rohde and his Afghan interpreter, Tahir Ludin, were kidnapped in Logar and smuggled into Pakistan.
In April 2004 Farrell suffered his first kidnap ordeal, in Fallujah, Iraq.
"When the first bunch of bandits arrived out of nowhere firing Kalashnikovs at us, the greatness or otherwise of the story couldn't have been further from my mind,” he said after being freed.
“All that was going through my head was: 'Are we going to die right here or are they going to take us off to a room somewhere, chain us to a radiator and kill us there?' I was certain we were dead."
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