The World : Australians’ Ordeal Told

An Australian, employed on a U.N. water project in Pakistan, and his wife were kidnaped by Pakistani tribal rebels and then jailed for seven months in Afghanistan where the authorities considered them counterrevolutionaries and forced them to read Communist propaganda, the couple told a news conference in New Delhi. Robert Williamson, 34, and his wife, Jennifer Lade, 32, said they were locked separately in isolation in Kabul prisons but were “never treated badly.” The couple were freed last week after an appeal to Afghanistan by U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar.