An elderly British couple have been arrested by Taliban authorities in Afghanistan, their daughter said Monday, urging UK diplomats to do “everything in their power” to secure their release.
Peter and Barbie Reynolds, who are in their seventies, have run school training programmes in the South Asian country for 18 years.
Their daughter Sarah Entwistle and her three brothers had initially chosen not to involve the UK authorities “hoping to hear directly from the Taliban about why they’d arrested our parents,” she told TimesRadio on Monday.
“Our parents have always sought to honour the Taliban, so we wanted to give them the opportunity to explain their reasons for this detention,” she said.
“However, after more than three weeks of silence, we can no longer wait. We’re now urgently calling on the British consulate to do everything in their power to get us answers and to put as much pressure as they can on the Taliban for their release,” she added.
The Taliban administration and the British Foreign Office declined to comment on the couple’s arrest.
The Reynolds, who married in Kabul in 1970, remained in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021 when the British embassy withdrew its staff.
The arrest on February 1 was apparently linked to the teaching of parenting skills to mothers over 30, according to The Sunday Times, which first reported the detention.
“My mother is 75 and my father almost 80 and (he) needs his heart medication after a mini-stroke,” Entwistle told the newspaper.
“They were just trying to help the country they loved. The idea they are being held because they were teaching mothers with children is outrageous,” she added.
The couple were reportedly arrested as they returned to their home in the central Bamiyan province.
In an open letter to the Taliban authorities quoted by the Sunday Times, Entwistle and her brothers pleaded for their parents to be released.
“We do not understand the reasons behind their arrest,” they wrote.
“Our parents have consistently expressed their commitment to Afghanistan,” the letter added.
Taliban leaders swept back to power in 2021 ousting the US-backed government and implementing a strict interpretation of Islamic law, despite promises not to return to the brutality displayed when they ruled in the 1990s.
They have since imposed broad restrictions on women and girls, barring them from education beyond the age of 12 and squeezing them out of jobs and public life with rules the United Nations has labelled “gender apartheid”.
