Taliban question UK journalist

Yvonne Ridley is being questioned by the Taliban after being arrested inside Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The Taliban have sent a special team to the north-eastern city of Jalalabad to question a British female journalist arrested after crossing into Afghanistan, the Afghan Islamic Press agency reports.

Yvonne Ridley, 43, a reporter for the London-based Sunday Express, was arrested on Friday along with two Afghan companions. They were detained in the Dour Daba district of eastern Afghanistan.

Ridley, who was said not to have been carrying any travel documents, was taken to Jalalabad for questioning on possible espionage charges.

Quoting Taliban sources, the AIP said on Sunday that the special team wanted to determine if she was a spy.

The agency said Ridley, a mother-of-one, was being detained in a house with a garden, and she was free to roam around the compound.

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She was being provided with clean clothes, food four or five times a day and cigarettes.

Meanwhile, diplomatic pressure is being applied from London. Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw said: "We have very limited, indirect contacts that remain with the Taliban.

"We are using those to find out urgently what has happened to Yvonne. Of course, we want her to be treated well and we want her to be released as soon as possible and the situation to be resolved in accordance with international norms.

"We are doing what we can in an extremely difficult situation. The Taliban don't have a record of adhering to international norms and I wouldn't put anything past them."

Ridley's eight-year-old daughter, Daisy, has made an emotional appeal to the Afghan authorities for her mother's release.

Speaking to the Sunday Express, Daisy Ridley said: "I just want mummy to come home. I miss her very much and I want them to let her go.

"She's a very kind person and she wouldn't do anything wrong. When I spoke to her on the phone she told me she was working very hard, but it was very hot."

Ridley crossed the border into Afghanistan disguised as an Afghan woman, having talked the risks through with the Sunday Express editor Martin Townsend and news executives, the paper reported.

In a message to her captors, the editor wrote: "Yvonne is a decent, honest and truthful woman -- a good mother and a loyal daughter to her family.

"Her aim was to report, as an unbiased bystander, on the terrible problems that Afghanistan faces in order to underline the need for understanding on all sides.

"We believe you are treating her well and would ask you to free her safely with whatever message you would like her to bring to the West. In Yvonne's capable hands that message will be delivered with clarity and honesty."

Ridley has worked for the Sunday Times, The Observer and The Independent and is a former assistant editor of the Sunday Sun.

Former colleague Colin Patterson, the Sunday Sun's deputy editor, said: "She is a very warm, gregarious sort of person who is very determined and tenacious. She is a good reporter and must be a daredevil to do what she has."