‘Chained, beaten, starved’: British couple reveal horror inside Taliban's 'hell' prison

They say love can handle it all and when it comes to Barbie and Peter, they are living proof. From being chained to starved for food, and even living apart, the British couple survived everything in their three months of "hell" living in the Taliban's most notorious prison, Pul-e-Charkhi.

The Taliban regime is one of the most brutal and dangerous regimes in the world. From public executions to chaining inmates, those in authority don't shy away from any form of punishment. For the couple, life in prison included residing in rat-infested cells, living away from each other and jrkfdjnjnjn. They survived hell by facing death in a country they had gone to help. To date, they don't know why they were arrested, but now, they are ready to speak.

A love story from the 1960s

Barbie, 76 and Peter, 80 met while studying sociology at Bath University and for them eight months in prison, three in the Taliban's most dangerous one, felt like "an involuntary participatory study of ten Taliban prisons."

They had gone to Afghanistan as students and fell in love with the country. Soon, they tied the knot in Kabul in 1970 and welcomed their first child Sarah, nine months later. They went on to have four more children, three boys and another girl over the years. The life they had planned as a minibus adventure with their kids driving through Iran to Afghanistan came to a shocking stop as Soviet tanks invaded the country in 1979.

After nine years of occupation, the Russians left, but the country was bathed in a bloody civil war and in 1966, the Taliban seized power. “I think God had mercy on our children and we never did get to Afghanistan for 33 years,” said Barbie to The Times. The family began living a quaint life in Bath where Peter became a social worker and the couple began a business called Rebuild, teaching families how to deal with all kinds of life issues.

They went back to Afghanistan in 2003, after US forces toppled the Taliban regime and Hamid Karzai was installed as president. They went again in 2005 but after Peter had a heart attack in 2006, they decided to complete their dream. “So we sold up everything and in 2007 went there to live.” After two years of living in the country, they set up Rebuild there and over 12 years, trained "thousands" of Afghans and hired 40 employees.

Taliban is back

On August 15, 2021, US troops completed their withdrawal after a 20-year war and the Taliban returned to power. “Our neighbours were all trying to get away in their cars. The airport was chaos,” recalled Peter. The British embassy advised them to leave as well, but the couple decided to stay. “We’d already decided to stay. We were now Afghan citizens. We’d just got our citizenship and passports. We weren’t going to desert them in their worst hour of need.”

One day the Taliban carried out a raid on the street looking for guns, and searched the couple's house three times in one day. A few days later, Peter was taken for questioning.

In 2022 the couple moved 150 miles northwest to Bamiyan and set up a house in Nayak, while also adopting three street dogs. Their company Rebuild was invited by the Ministry of Youth Affairs to run seminars and Barbie even got a "letter of appreciation" from the Taliban, suggesting that they take their work to “all 34 provinces to help prepare the next generation.”

The prison time

On February 1, 2025 the couple returned to Bamiyan from Kabul with their Chinese-American friend Faye Hall. The route to their home was blocked by the Taliban with Kalashnikovs, asking them to come meet their commander for just 15 minutes. They ended up spending the entire day and night in police barracks in the compound of the provincial governor using their phones for light.

Barbie got them out of there with a smart tactic of calling a doctor to tell the authorities that Peter needed his medicines for his heart and had to head back home. However, the next morning, the Taliban took them to the Bamiyan police station for the night before taking them to Kabul.

They reached the Ministry of Interior Affairs which was headed by Sirajuddin Haqqani, a warlord with a $10 million US bounty on his head as leader of the Haqqani network, an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organisation. Peter and Barbie were interrogated and held in separate cells with walls covered in black mould and mice that ran through their hair.

Two days later, they returned to Bamiyan for a court hearing. But upon reaching their home they found it ransacked. As they went to the court the next morning they were promised to return home the next day. Thus rather than taking Peter's medicine or a change of clothes, all they had was a toothbrush and a pen.

But rather than going to court, they were taken to the interior ministry in Kabul where Barbie and Faye were kept in a woman's prison while Peter and the interpreter were stationed in a cell with 25 other men. They were held there for the next three weeks.

Chains and charges

“The commander questioned me for more than three hours, a real pummelling. He was asking everything. A lot about religion. ‘Do you say you hear God? Does God speak to you? Did you have sex with your wife before you married her?’” said Peter. Suspicious that the couple were missionaries, the Taliban even interrogated their staff. Then, they claimed that their passports and business licence were forged.“I told them I got my passport under their government from a very striking Taliban who said, ‘Welcome to Afghanistan!’”

Eventually, they were told that they would be taken to a court and released and by then they had already been detained for a month. “They took us to court but all they did was hand in the papers. We didn’t even go in. That, for me, was one of the worst times. Because there I saw Peter trying to get into the back of one of the police vehicles that were open at the back. His legs were chained and he was handcuffed to another prisoner. He could have fallen backwards," said Barbie.

Back from the court, a guard hit Peter on the head calling him a 'kafir' and they were taken to a compound outside Kabul surrounded by razor wire and watchtowers. Where was this? Pul-e-Charkhi, the prison where the Taliban conducted executions.

Three months in hell

Pul-e-Charkhi is known as Afghanistan's most notorious prison. Built in the 1970s by the Russians, it has had Taliban and jihadists and is known for torture, beatings, overcrowding and unhealthy conditions.

The couple were imprisoned there for three months, and as Peter said, it was "the closest thing to hell." He was taken to the men's prison and held with two other men. They had their own latrine and shower.

Barbie and Faye were kept in the women's prison which had a long, tunnel-like corridor with 16 rooms. The two women's cell held 15 women and two children with just 5 bunk beds. “Everybody gets a blanket provided by an NGO, which we had to wash ourselves every two weeks. There were four showers but none worked, so we had to use taps and all the water ran into a drain full of trash down the middle of the corridor.”

The lavatories were just a hole in the ground and seven of them were used by 230 women and 40 children. “The girl in the bunk above me was 19 and in jail for driving a car. Women aren’t allowed to drive under the Taliban. And worst of all it was her boyfriend’s car. I mean, you can’t have boyfriends. So she got six months," shared Barbie who was able to talk to them in Farsi.

“There was a mother of four who was caught talking to a man and her husband got jealous and killed him. Of course it’s never the man’s fault, so she was given a five-year sentence and couldn’t see her children.”

Food in a Taliban prison

Their first few weeks in prison coincided with Ramadan, giving them only one meal a day. When they began receiving two it included a piece of naan and some overcooked vegetables for lunch and rice and kidney beans for dinner. Meat came twice a week in the form of soup.

If you wanted something else, it had to be bought from a shop outside and all the money they had been taken from the interior ministry. Every prisoner was given 1000 afghanis at the end of March for Eid and others earned 50 afghanis each day for cleaning the lavatories.

Barbie was suffering from anaemia and malnutrition. Qatari diplomats managed to give her money to buy food from the shop. What she survived on were naan, cream cheese, yogurt and cucumbers.

Then, on March 29, after three and a half weeks in Pul-e-Charkhi, Faye was released, days after President Trump agreed to lift the bounties from the heads of Haqqani, the interior minister, and two of his relatives. Through his weekly phone call with his children, Peter got to know that they had been contacting media organisations. Since the UK does not recognise the Taliban, there is no British embassy in Kabul and a special envoy in Doha, Richard Lindsay was able to reach them in June.

In mid-May, Peter was finally allowed to meet Barbie for a night in the women's prison and the next day, May 18, they were released. But not for home, they were taken to the General Directorate of Intelligence and locked in a basement infested with mice and cockroaches for five weeks.

Back to base

On September 19, they were told to pack everything up. “We tried not to get too excited as there had been so many disappointments.”

“They drove us to a building we didn’t recognise. Then suddenly the door opens and in walk two people from the British Foreign Office [one of whom was Lindsay] as well as Qataris in their long white robes, a medical team and some other Afghans.”

Where they were was the Kabul airport, flying off to Doha where they met their eldest daughter and her husband waiting for them. Then they flew to Heathrow. Now, they live in their son's flat since all of their belongings are still in Afghanistan and the Taliban has sealed their house. What do they wish? To still go back!