Taliban deny role in US reporter kidnapping (AFP)

[Yahoo!_news]

AFP - Afghanistan's Taliban militant group on Sunday denied any involvement in the kidnapping of a New York Times reporter who has escaped to freedom after seven months in captivity.

David Rohde and a local reporter, who were abducted outside of Kabul along with their driver, "just walked over the wall of the compound" where they were being held captive in Pakistan's remote North Waziristan region, Rohde's wife Kristen Mulvihill told the Times after speaking with her husband.

The Taliban, responsible for most such kidnappings in Afghanistan as part of an insurgency they are waging against the Kabul government, said the group was not involved in the abduction.

"Even at that time when they were kidnapped we had not claimed their kidnapping," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed told AFP by phone from an undisclosed location.

"And now... we are not aware of how they were freed or escaped. We're not involved at all and we do not know who had kidnapped them," the rebel spokesman said.

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