British couple released from Taliban detention, reunited with family
Global News
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomed the couple’s release, saying that it was a relief to have secured their return.
An older British couple held by the Taliban on unknown charges for eight months have been released, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer confirmed in a statement on Friday.
“This long-awaited news will come as a huge relief to them and their family,” he said.
Peter Reynolds, 80, and his wife, Barbie Reynolds, 76, lived in Afghanistan for 18 years and ran an education and training organization in the country’s central province of Bamiyan. They chose to remain in the country after the Taliban seized back power in 2021.
They were taken from their home on Feb. 1, 2025.
Qatari officials negotiated the couple’s release before they returned to the U.K..
“God is good, as they say in Afghanistan,” Barbie Reynolds said as she arrived at Kabul International Airport to leave the country, the Associated Press reported.
Mohammed bin Abdulaziz al-Khulaifi, Qatar’s minister of state for foreign affairs, thanked the United Kingdom and Afghanistan’s Taliban government “for the fruitful co-operation” in freeing the Reynolds, the outlet also wrote, adding that the couple made a stop in Doha to undergo medical checks before flying to the U.K..
Family members for months had been calling for the release of the couple, and had expressed concerns for their health amid reports of abusive treatment.
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