Perth aid workers recall ‘miracle’ escape from Taliban in wake of 9/11 attacks

Detailed summary

Peter Bunch, Diana Thomas and six foreign colleagues became Taliban prisoners of war as bombs rained down after the deadly 9/11 attacks.

It’s the stuff of nightmares: arrested at gunpoint in a war-ravaged foreign country and thrown into a filthy prison for something you didn’t do.

But for two Australian aid workers, it was the start of a real and terrifying ordeal in Afghanistan that almost cost their lives.

Peter Bunch, Diana Thomas and six foreign colleagues became Taliban prisoners of war as bombs rained down after the deadly 9/11 attacks.

“I made peace with myself and God,” Bunch, now 83, said, 25 years after US special forces rescued the group.

Religious police arrested the Shelter Now International team on August 3, 2001, about six weeks before the Twin Towers fell in New York.

“They put a Kalashnikov to the side of my head,” Bunch recalls of being taken into custody.

Local staff were also seized in the purge, which made international headlines.

Accused of preaching Christianity to Afghans, the missionaries, including four Germans and two Americans, faced fundamentalist trial under Sharia law and potentially the death penalty.

The pariah state had become infamous for extreme restrictions on women and brutal medieval punishment, including public executions.

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