An award-winning British documentary maker was on his way home last night after being held hostage by Islamic extremists for three months in the hostile border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sean Langan, whose Channel 4 documentary Fighting the Taliban was short-listed for a Bafta this year, had been held in a dark basement and endured a number of mock executions.

He was kidnapped while filming in a tribal area on the border in March. Negotiations with the kidnappers, which began after Channel 4 discovered that he had been taken a few weeks later, were “extremely tense all the way through”, Afghan sources close to the talks told The Times. According to one source the kidnappers twice reneged on a promise to release Mr Langan.

“It was only down to some extremely skilled negotiations, conducted at great risk, that clinched the release,” the source said. “This wasn’t some bandit group. The kidnappers were well linked politically.”

The source said that Mr Langan had been allowed to telephone his family two weeks ago to establish “proof of life”, and that he may have been kidnapped by members of a group he was trying to interview.

Mr Langan, 43, described by his friends as a “hugely eccentric and entertaining character”, emerged shattered from his ordeal on Saturday night, reportedly suffering from dysentery. His interpreter, an Afghan called Sammy, was also released unharmed.

A source close to the family of Mr Langan said that his brother David, his former wife Annabelle and his mother had been working tirelessly to secure his release. His family will make a formal statement after he arrives back in the country today.

Mr Langan travelled to the hostile region at the end of last year to film a follow-up to his award-winning Channel 4 film Meeting the Taliban. The remote location meant it took three weeks until his absence was picked up by Channel 4, which then initiated established procedures to secure his release.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said: “We’re glad to hear he’s safe and well and would encourage people to give him space after a traumatic experience. We were not involved directly in securing his release but have subsequently provided consular assistance.”

The Foreign Office first heard of the kidnap in May when its embassy in Kabul reported that a journalist was missing in Afghanistan.

Mr Langan specialises in making video-diary style documentaries, working alone for long periods of time and often in hostile environments. His three films on Afghanistan, Tea with the Taliban, Kabul Vice, and Fighting the Taliban were nominated for Bafta and Grierson awards.

Mr Langan has focused on the War on Terror since 2001 and held the first interviews with the Islamic militants in Iraq fighting US troops.

When Fighting the Taliban won a Rory Peck award last year Toby Young, a journalist and friend of Mr Langan’s, called to offer his congratulations. “He’s up a mountain somewhere, incommunicado,” his former wife told Mr Young.

Times Recommends

• Both sides blame US for worsening relations
• Stieg Larsson: losing the plot over his cash
• Odd creature paralysed by incompatible parts