{"id":11020,"date":"2019-11-12T19:01:21","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T10:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/nov\/12\/taliban-prisoners-released-in-bid-to-free-western-kidnap-victims-afghanistan"},"modified":"2019-11-12T19:01:21","modified_gmt":"2019-11-12T10:01:21","slug":"taliban-prisoners-released-in-attempt-to-free-western-kidnap-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=11020","title":{"rendered":"Taliban prisoners released in attempt to free western kidnap victims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Afghan president Ghani hopes move will help secure release of American and Australian<\/p>\n<p>Afghanistan\u2019s president says he has ordered the release of three Taliban fighters in an effort to persuade the insurgent group to free a kidnapped American and Australian professor.<\/p>\n<p>Timothy Weekes, an English teacher from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales, and Kevin King, from Pennsylvania, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2016\/aug\/08\/australian-academic-and-us-colleague-abducted-in-kabul-sayreports\">were abducted three years ago<\/a> from outside American University of Afghanistan in Kabul by fighters in military uniform.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/nov\/12\/taliban-prisoners-released-in-bid-to-free-western-kidnap-victims-afghanistan\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Afghan president Ghani hopes move will help secure release of American and AustralianAfghanistan\u2019s president says he has ordered the release of three Taliban fighters in an effort to persuade the insurgent group to free a kidnapped American and Austral&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":680,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46,43,61,44,47,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-australia-news","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban","category-us-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/680"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11021,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11020\/revisions\/11021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}