Japan reporter held by Taliban in OK health: media

A US soldier is seen on patrol in the Shahwali Kot district of Kandahar. A Japanese journalist missing in northern Afghanistan since late March has said that he is being held by the Taliban but is in good health, a newspaper reported Thursday. (AFP/File/Tauseef Mustafa)

TOKYO (AFP) – A Japanese journalist missing in northern Afghanistan since late March has said that he is being held by the Taliban but is in good health, a newspaper reported Thursday.

“I am in good health. I don’t have any injuries,” Kosuke Tsuneoka, 40, was quoted as telling the Mainichi Shimbun, which said it interviewed him and his captors in a 30-minute telephone conversation.

To his parents in Japan, the freelance journalist said: “I want them not to worry and to wait for me.”

Members of the group holding Tsuneoka told the Mainichi that they had asked the Japanese embassy to negotiate the release of their imprisoned comrades, but were told that Japan had no jurisdiction over them.

Criminal groups and Taliban insurgents have kidnapped several dozen foreigners, many of them journalists, since the 2001 US-led invasion that ousted the Taliban regime in Kabul and sparked the current insurgency.

In his last Twitter posting on March 31, Tsuneoka said he had gone into a Taliban-controlled area in the country’s north.

He had previously also covered conflicts in Chechnya and Iraq. — AFP