Video released of US soldier captured in Afghanistan

Kabul, April 8 (IANS/AKI) The Taliban have released a new video which appears to show an American soldier captured in Afghanistan in June last year.

On the video, Idaho National Guard Private Bowe Bergdahl asks the US government to intervene and win his release.

The video was posted late Wednesday and described by SITE Intelligence Group, a Bethesda, Maryland-based organisation which monitors web sites used by extremist groups.

Bergdahl, who was 23 at the time of his capture, looks fit and is heard listing the names of his family and friends. The eight-minute video shows him sporting a beard and doing push-ups to demonstrate he’s in good physical condition.

“I’m a prisoner. I want to go home. You know, the Afghanistan men who are in our prisons want to go home too. Let me go. Get me to come home. Release me,” Bergdahl says, according to SITE.

“This war isn’t worth the waste of human life that has cost both Afghanistan and the US. It’s not worth the amount of lives that have been wasted in prisons, Guantanamo Bay, Bagram, all those places where we are keeping prisoners,” he says.

A Taliban spokesman says in the video they are demanding the release of some prisoners in exchange for the soldier.

Bergdahl was serving with an Alaska-based infantry regiment in Paktika province. He vanished from his base, near the border with Pakistan, five months after arriving in Afghanistan.

The military has been trying to locate him ever since, and a reward has been offered for his safe return.

He is believed to be the first soldier seized in either Iraq or Afghanistan for at least two years.

–IANS/AKI