Translator’s girl, 6, seized from street – because dad helped British
THE daughter of a former Afghan translator for UK forces told yesterday how she was snatched off the street while playing with her doll.
Six year-old Wajia said she had a knife held to her face as she was told by her Taliban kidnappers: ‘I will kill you and your infidel father.’
The terrified youngster was hit in the face when she began to cry before being thrown from a moving taxi in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
She was thrown out of the vehicle when shopkeepers who had seen her being snatched blocked the alley. Her father Tameem, who worked with the British military for five years, said: ‘It was clearly a warning from the Taliban who had been hunting me, threatening me.’
The 36-year- old, who had twice been attacked by pro-Taliban insurgents and received death threats, said it was the moment he decided to flee Afghanistan. He chose to pay people traffickers after being told the UK could not help him.
Speaking from Istanbul, Turkey, yesterday, he said: ‘I was a target for the Taliban because of my work with the British and Coalition partners but now my pregnant wife and three children had become targets too... No father could live with not trying to protect them – there is no safe place from insurgents in my homeland.’
Wajia, now aged seven, said: ‘I was playing with my doll in front of our house when suddenly a man picked me up and put me in a yellow taxi with another man.
‘I started crying and the man put a big knife in my face. He said “I will kill you” and slapped my head telling me to shut up... The other man told me “I will kill you father, he is an infidel.” I still have nightmares about this.’
The Daily Mail’s award-winning Betrayal of the Brave campaign has highlighted how the Taliban have frequently targeted the family members of interpreters.
Tameem said he reported the threats to the UK’s special unit but was told he did not qualify for help because he resigned from the job.
The kidnap of his daughter 18 months ago was reported to Afghan police. In recent weeks, he said, the Taliban had again been to the family home looking for him.
He said he and his wife Samira, 30, children Musawer, 11, Kawsar, five, Mubashir, one, and Wajia were now ‘trapped’ in Istanbul, surviving illegally by working in a textile factory.
They are unable to return to Afghanistan because of the threats and a lack of funds, he said.
Tameem is one of at least six former translators living illegally in Greece and Turkey who say they are stranded and want to come to Britain. Colonel Simon Diggins, former military attache at the British embassy in Kabul, said: ‘Those stranded in countries like Turkey and Greece should be allowed to apply to come to the UK from refugee camps and other places.’
BETRAYAL OF THE BRAVE