British ex-soldier arrested by Taliban flies out of Kabul with UK officials

A British former soldier who was detained by the Taliban in Afghanistan has flown out of Kabul with UK officials, a diplomatic source told AFP on Tuesday.

Ben Slater, 37, departed on a flight to Doha with top British envoys who had visited for talks with senior Taliban officials.

The Sun tabloid reported that Slater’s evacuation was directly supervised by the British defense minister Ben Wallace.

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Slater, a former soldier in the Royal Military Police, runs a chain of NGOs in Afghanistan, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The Taliban briefly detained him last month as he was trying to evacuate his 400 Afghan staff overland to Pakistan after failing to secure places for them on a British airlift.

He was questioned over why single women were staying in hotels without husbands.

The Taliban then released Slater but said he could only take one staff member across the land border while ordering the others to return to Kabul.

Slater urged the Foreign Office in London to help evacuate his staff from the country after a “complete disaster” at the border.

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