Dave Lavery, a veteran of the United Nations Canadian Air Air Regiment, has been traveling inside and outside Kabul for two decades.
Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, it has also helped evacuate hundreds of Afghan vulnerable to reprisals due to their work for the military in Canada.
But while the Taliban had not disturbed him in the past, when he landed at Hamid Karzai airport on the morning of November 11, 2024, they seemed to be waiting for him.
They took it in custody and kept it for 77 days until they finally let him go on January 26. “It was stressful, he was intimidating,” said Global News on Sunday.
In an interview a week after being released, Lavery said the Taliban questioned him repeatedly if he was a spy. Its captors also suspected because it had 18 visas and tickets for aircraft for two afraid Afghan families to come to Canada.
The beret and the combat jacket in his bag similarly were sustained against him, he said, although they were simply going to use when he put a memory crown of the day of memory on a monument for Canadian soldiers.
“I am a spy, that kind of thing,” he said, describing the accusations that the General Directorate of Intelligence of the Talibans put him during the interrogations.
He said he still does not know what, if anyone, the Canadian government or the Qatari intermediaries who negotiated their release. “That is the question of one million dollars,” he said.
Dave and Junping Lavery speak with Global News in Dubai, February 2, 2025.
Global news
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly, announced Lavery's launched last Sunday and thanked Qatar Prime Minister, Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
Since then, Lavery had refrained from making public statements, but after a week of freedom, he spoke with the global news of his home in Dubai, accompanied by his wife, Junping.
He also shared a newspaper he maintained during his captivity. He begins with his name, date of birth, a note for his family and a vote of “never yield”, and ends with the entrance, “going home.”
Lavery has a long international humanitarian service history. After two decades in the Canadian army, he went to work for the United Nations as a security advisor in 2000.
Canadian Dave, as he is known, responded to crises worldwide, from Sudan and Somalia to Pakistan and Sri Lanka, working with UN agencies and NGOs.
First he visited Afghanistan in 2005, when a plane crashed in the mountains outside Kabul, an experience that led him to move to the city in 2010 as a private contractor.
Through his company Raven Rae Resources Group, he continued in the same niche he had occupied in the UN, until the US forces began their disastrous withdrawal of 2021 from Afghanistan.
As the Islamist militants advanced in Kabul, the Afghan who had helped the Army and the Canadian government were desperate to escape, fearing Taliban revenge.
Working with veterans Transition Network, a beneficial organization based in BC financed by the Federal Government, took them to Safe Casas and stayed while the Afghas harassed the airport, trying to get on evacuation flights.
He helped hundreds to reach the airplanes before climbing one of the last ones, and from his new base in Dubai, he continued to help Afghans flee, using vehicle convoys to escort them and their families to Pakistan.
Meanwhile, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he launched an operation in Poland that evacuated the Ukrainians who had worked with the Canadian forces.
“Dave Lavery is a Canadian hero,” said Gavin Dew, who presides over VTN, based in Vancouver and was created in 2012 to provide advice and trauma programs for veterans.
The Canadian veteran of the newspaper, Dave Lavery, remained during his 77 days as a Taliban prisoner.
Brochure
The day before going to Kabul, Lavery posed for a photo on the beach in Dubai, holding a copy of the book I was reading: Kabul escape.
The next morning, with a marine jacket with a red poppy in the flap, a selfie was taken on the bus at Dubai airport and sent it to his colleagues.
He was the first outside the plane in Kabul. They cleaned the customs and obtained his luggage carousel suitcase, but soon suspected that they followed him.
He said he had left the terminal and was walking towards the parking lot to meet Junping, who was already in Kabul, when security officials grabbed him.
They took him back to the airport and passed through his bags, finding the plane tickets and the visas of the Canadian government.
The Taliban also had an unhealthy interest in the beret and the combat jacket that had led to use to honor Canada's failure on the day of memory.
With bandaged eyes and with a scarf that was tied with his hands, he was placed at the back of a vehicle and taken to a cell, starting what he calls his “illegal detention.”
When Lavery did not leave Kabul airport, Junping waited and tried to call, but his phone went out. Nor did he respond to WhatsApp messages.
She showed her photo and called Lavery's son, but it was quickly evident that the worst had happened: the Taliban had taken him a prisoner.
Remembering his military training, Lavery said he tried to keep calm and understand his environment.
His interrogator explained that if he cooperated, an investigation could formally start, but if he did not, they would return in a month and try again.
This could continue for years, explained the intelligence officer Talibán, and Lavery had spent enough time in Afghanistan to know that it is true.
His cell was four meters by six meters, with a narrow window sealed with reinforcement bars. A mattress lay on a stained red carpet and there was a cup of plastic for chai.
Lavery said H told himself that this could be his home for a long time, and anything less than that would be an advantage. He got into a walking routine around his cell.
Canadian veteran Dave Lavery was released by the Taliban on January 26, 2025.
Veterans Transition Network
With the hope of reaching a hospital, where he could communicate with his family, he began playing the role of a fragile old, walking with a limp and complaining of kidney problems and a hip replacement.
The Taliban responded mockingly. They had seen their online profile, which Dave as Canadian. The Canadian Dave did not need a doctor, they said, Canadian Dave was strong.
“What's up, Canadian Dave?”
After a meal that consists of a fish head, he began to vomit and appealed to take him to the hospital to obtain tests, what they did.
Then he went with bandados and taken to a “guest house” complex where four Americans were also held (two were soon released in an exchange of prisoners).
It was a step forward of his cell, and there was a TV where CNN could see.
The interrogations he passed were threatening, he said. The Taliban accused him of espionage and reviewed his body for a GPS tracker.
He was asked about the Canadian and Israel Security Intelligence Service, and what he was doing in Ukraine. He replied that it was not spy. But, he said, he was not beaten or tortured.
Canadian veteran Dave Lavery with Qatar officials after he was released by the Taliban, on January 26, 2025.
Brochure
At the end of December, the Talibanes transferred him again, this time to the town that served as Lavery base in Kabul. I was under house arrest, but I had some comforts at home.
He was allowed to call his family for the first time on December 30. But then he found a Nokia phone that his captors had lost.
Once he had his hands on a cable, he was able to load him and call his son Brant, who was surprised to hear his father's voice.
Bant said in an interview that he assured his father that the Qatar government watched him and was working to get him out.
Canadian officials were also in contact with the Qataris and believed that their release was imminent.
“And I was able to feed Dad something of this type of information,” Brant said in an interview. “I think his morals increased.”
The family had an additional incentive to see Lavery released as quickly as possible. Brant and his wife await their first child in spring, and they loved him there.
“Trust me, I was pressing the global issues of Canada and everyone I could. I was calling on the phone and had phone calls with Minister Joly, ”said Brant.
“It's something we really wanted. We were pressing for that. In our calls with Minister Joly, he said he would work very hard on that. ”
The Canadian Dave Lavery meets with his wife at Doha, Qatar airport.
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On January 25, Lavery worked on the roof of the town, ate a pizza dinner and wrote a note in his newspaper to join before a guard reached his room.
“Good news David,” according to the story of the conversation in his diary. “You are being released, 100% tomorrow you will go.”
The Taliban told him that the country's courts had decided that he had been cooperative and had fulfilled enough time, although for what was never explained.
“Good night see you tomorrow,” says one of his last tickets in the newspaper. “Wow, I'm going home on 77. I was very lucky.”
When his plane landed in Doha, he descended the air stairs and saw a row of officials in the asphalt. He thought a VIP should be on the plane.
But they were there for him. He posed for photos with the Qatar and met with Junping and his son before returning to Dubai.
Lavery said he was “very, very happy” with Canada's global affairs, and said that Joly “was fantastic” and gave his son his direct number so they could speak.
He has no plans to return to Kabul, he said.
The Qataríes told the family that it was the fastest case they had handled. The Afghan families that Lavery were to help were also safely evacuated to Pakistan by road.
Brant said the family is delighted that Lavery will be there when his grandson is born.
“We can celebrate something really positive for the whole family. And we know that Dad really will be there with us, ”said Brant.
“Many things were working behind the scene, and Canada was a large part of that and the Qatar too.”
“We have to really thank so many people.”
Stewart.bell@globalnews.ca