{"id":11700,"date":"2019-12-01T17:17:07","date_gmt":"2019-12-01T08:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2019\/dec\/01\/freed-taliban-hostage-timothy-weeks-says-he-never-gave-up-hope"},"modified":"2019-12-01T17:17:07","modified_gmt":"2019-12-01T08:17:07","slug":"freed-taliban-hostage-timothy-weeks-says-he-never-gave-up-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=11700","title":{"rendered":"Freed Taliban hostage Timothy Weeks says he never gave up hope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Australian teacher thanks those who helped free him and says he formed tight bonds with some of his captors<\/p>\n<p>Freed Taliban hostage Timothy Weeks says he never gave up hope he would be rescued during three \u201clong and tortuous\u201d years in captivity in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking publicly for the first time since his release as part of a complex prisoner swap almost two weeks ago, the Australian teacher thanked all those who helped secure his freedom, and said he had formed extraordinarily tight bonds with some of his Taliban captors.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/australia-news\/2019\/dec\/01\/freed-taliban-hostage-timothy-weeks-says-he-never-gave-up-hope\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Australian teacher thanks those who helped free him and says he formed tight bonds with some of his captorsFreed Taliban hostage Timothy Weeks says he never gave up hope he would be rescued during three \u201clong and tortuous\u201d years in captivity in Afghani&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":739,"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":[46,43,645,61,44,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-australia-news","category-australian-foreign-policy","category-south-and-central-asia","category-taliban","category-us-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11700","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\/739"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11701,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11700\/revisions\/11701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}