A 79-year-old British man locked up in one of Afghanistan’s most notorious prisons has described conditions as ‘the nearest thing to hell I can imagine’.
Peter Reynolds and his wife Barbie, 76, have been held captive without charge for more than two months since they were arrested while trying to return home to Bamiyan province on February 1.
‘I’ve been joined up with rapists and murderers by handcuffs and ankle cuffs, including a man who killed his wife and three children, shouting away, a demon-possessed man’, the charity worker said.
He’s been able to speak with his family through a payphone in the prison yard.
They’ve shared recordings of his calls with The Sunday Time to raise awareness of the couple’s plight in Pul-e-Charkhi prison.
Surrounded by barbed wire and high grey walls, Kabul’s main jail has a fearsome reputation that predates the Taliban regime.
It was the site of torture and executions during the Communist dictatorship of the 1970s and decade-long Soviet invasion of 1979.
The bones of an estimated 2,000 people were found in a mass grave in 2006. Many had reportedly been blindfolded and shot in the head.
After the US invasion of 2001, the prison became known for chronic overcrowding, with its population soaring to triple its capacity of 5,000 inmates.
Heroin addiction was rampant, and each cell might have 100 prisoners with just enough room for each to lie down on a floor infested with cockroaches.
That looked like it might change when the Taliban took back control in 2021 and released most of its prisoners – many of them their own militants, ISIS fighters, and detainees from Guantanamo Bay.
But Afghanistan’s prison population has been rising again since then, ‘with more detainees admitted daily than are released’, according to the UN. Some of its former inmates now guard the jail.
Peter might have ‘VIP conditions’ compared to other prisoners, but he’s fed just one meal a day – bread and chickpeas – in what he describes as ‘a cage rather than a cell’.
‘The atmosphere is pretty shocking’, he said over the phone. ‘The prison guards shout all the time and beat people with a piece of piping. It’s a horrible atmosphere – the nearest thing to hell I can imagine.’
Peter and Barbie, who is kept on a separate women’s wing, don’t know why they have been imprisoned in the country they’ve called home for 18 years.
Their charity work earned them the Taliban’s praise, with Barbie becoming the first woman they issued a certificate of appreciation, despite their programmes teaching skills like parenting to women, for whom education is banned.
‘The Taliban leaders were so impressed and inspired by the programmes Mum and Dad were offering, they said they would like them set up in every province of Afghanistan’, their daughter Sarah Entwistle previously said.
But on February 1, they were arrested after flying home to Bamiyan province, famous for 1500-year-old Buddha statues, carved into the cliffside, which were destroyed by the last Taliban regime.
Jaya, their interpreter, and a visiting Chinese-American friend Faye Hall, were arrested with them.
Hall has since been released after Donald Trump’s administration lifted $10 million bounties from the heads of senior Taliban leaders. She is the fourth US citizen released since January.
The Taliban indicated in February that they ‘will endeavour to release [Barbie and Peter] as soon as possible.
But Barbie and Peter remain behind bars. No charges have been announced.
This has raised some concern for the health of Peter in particular.
His health deterioriated after he was moved to the maximum security prison. He developed a chest infection, eye infection and digestive issues resulting from poor nutrition, his daughter said last month.
But an EU lawyer has since been allowed to bring heart pills and beta blockers, needed due to a stroke last year, after the medication ran out.
The British couple first visited Afghanistan while students at the University of Bath, later marrying there in 1970.
While most foreigners left after the Taliban takeover in 2021, Barbie and Peter stayed.
Sarah said: ‘The hardest part for Mum and Dad is this is the longest they have gone without speaking to each other since they became sweethearts in the 1960s.
‘When they go to court, they are taken separately and can only see each other from behind the mesh and mouth “I love you”.’
Despite their ordeal Barbie and Peter are staying ‘true to themselves’. Barbie is teaching English to her fellow inmates, while Peter insists no ransom is paid.
He said: ‘It doesn’t solve anything if millions of dollars are paid. This government needs to face up to the fact it has made a mistake, it has done wrong. If money is paid there is nothing to stop them arresting people again.’
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