An international humanitarian organisation whose director was previously imprisoned in a freezing cold metal container by the Taliban has become the first Christian group permitted to return to Afghanistan.
Shelter Now International (SNI) has been invited to return by the hardline Islamic regime to help with relief efforts in the country. And it has already provided humanitarian aid in the provinces of Khost and Paktika after severe earthquakes struck there recently.
Germany-based SNI’s International Director is Georg Taubmann (on left in photo), a German citizen who, with seven SNI colleagues, spent three months in five Taliban prisons (one three metres underground) in 2001 for promoting Christianity. On their way to Kandahar, where the Taliban would have killed them, they were incarcerated in a freezing cold metal container before being rescued and flown by helicopter to Pakistan by US special forces, a story that made headlines throughout the world.