Five Bangladeshis, who were freed on August 2 seven months after being abducted in Afghanistan, returned home on Sunday morning.
The five who worked as road construction workers with South Korea's Samwhan Corporation in Afghanistan described their plights on their arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport about 8:40am by an Emirates flight.
The Afghan police had blamed the Taliban for the abduction of the seven Bangladeshis on December 17 from a construction site near Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan.
The abductors shot dead Bangladeshi engineer Kazi Altaf Hossain at the place from where they were abducted. They set free two of the captives two days later.
The five workers who reached home on Sunday are Samwhan's excavator operators Aminul Islam and Mahbub Ali, grader operator Imam Uddin and surveyors Abdur Rahman Lovelu and SM Shafiul Alam Khokan.
'The abductors used to say that they had kidnapped us as we, being Muslims, were working for non-Muslims,' Aminul Islam said. 'The abductors said that they faced problems in carrying out their activities because of the development works.'
'I lost hopes for survival,' Mahbub Ali told New Age as he recalled the days when they nearly starved. He said that they had not been physically tortured but they had been kept shackled at night.
Aminul Islam said they had been given only breads three times a day. 'They gave us only 10 litres of water, for drinking and other purposes, a day. We had not taken bath when we were captives.' he said. 'It was like a jungle.'
'We were routinely told that they would set us free in two to three days.
But it took seven months for us to be set free,' Mahbub said.
After their abduction, they were moved three times to different places in the Mazar-e-Sharif province and sometimes they were kept in caves and sometime on hill tops.
Mahbub said that the day before they would be released, one of the abductors videoed them. 'We told them that we would leave the country soon after our release.'
The abductors set them free in a remote place n the province the next morning. They could contact their employers over telephone after walking for two hours. And they could reach the office.
Physicians examined their health and found that Mahbub and Abdur Rahman had contracted typhoid. 'I am also suffering from kidney problems,' Mahbub said.
The victims, however, said that their employers had paid them their salary each month when they were in Taliban custody.
The families of the victims said that they had passed their days in anxiety and uncertainty.
'I had always thought that my father would return one day. And this has finally happened,' said Ashikur Rahman, son of Abdur Rahman, at the airport.
The foreign minister, Dipu Moni, earlier received them at the airport.
The government had negotiated the release of the workers with the Afghan government and the Korean company, Dipu Moni told reporters at the airport.
She thanked the Samwhan Corporation for its efforts in having the Bangladeshi workers set free.
The minister also gave an assurance of all necessary help to the workers from the government.
'We will talk with the people who returned and help them,' said Dipu Moni referring to the cases that happened with the people who returned from Libya.
Asked whether they were freed in exchange for ransom, the foreign minister said the government did not know whether a ransom was paid.
Samwhan Corporation paid for the travel of the workers, the officials said.
Aminul and Shafiqul are from Kalihati, Tangail; and Abdur Rahman is from Chowdhury Malancho of the same district. Mahbub is from Charghat in Rajshahi and Imam Uddin is from Rangunia in Chittagong.
Source : New Age
