Kabul Frees Frenchman Seized With Guerrillas in Afghanistan

NEW DELHI — A French photojournalist who was captured last summer in Afghanistan while covering U.S.-backed guerrillas was released Saturday from a prison near Kabul after a pardon by Afghan President Najibullah.

Alain Guillo, 45, a free-lance photographer, was pardoned after a personal appeal by French President Francois Mitterrand. He arrived Saturday at the French Embassy in New Delhi and later departed for Paris aboard an Air France flight accompanied by French officials.

Guillo was captured Aug. 28 in an ambush of the rebels he was traveling with. A revolutionary tribunal sentenced him in March to a 10-year jail term for “acts of espionage and subversion.” But the journalist denied the charges, calling his trial as “a comedy, a parody of justice . . . of human rights.”

Najibullah said he freed Guillo after “taking into account the longstanding friendship of France and Afghanistan, the new developments in the Geneva accords (providing for a Soviet troop withdrawal), and for strengthening relations in the future.”

But Guillo said he was released because of international pressure and a desire by Najibullah for good publicity on the eve of the U.S.-Soviet summit in Moscow.

Four other French reporters have been captured in Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion in 1979, but they have all been released after being held for periods of up to nine months.