Regret the Error

An article, “Rescuing Robohack” (Focus, last week), said that The New York Times denied that it had paid a ransom for the release of the reporter David Rohde but that authoritative sources in the region said the Taliban received up to $9m (£5.4m). The New York Times assures us that no ransom at all was paid by any party on its behalf to secure the freedom of Rohde. We accept that our regional sources were mistaken and that The New York Times paid no ransom. We are happy to set the record straight. As we previously reported, Rohde and an Afghan colleague escaped by using a rope to scale a wall, and nothing in our story was intended to cast doubt on that account. Link