Pen Farthing has revealed the Taliban stabbed one of his dogs as he desperately fled Afghanistan with his rescue animals.

The former Royal Marine, 52, arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport in a privately funded charter flight on Sunday, along with around 200 dogs and cats from an animal shelter he founded in Afghanistan. He then took a connecting flight to Norway to be with his wife Kaisa Markhus.

The animals will now have to quarantine under UK law, but some could be euthanised if they have any diseases.

As he looks back on his campaign to escape Kabul, he said he feels ‘no joy just guilt’ after leaving without his Afghan staff.

He told the Daily Mail: ‘I think I’ve cried more in the last five or six days than I have since I was four-years-old. I’m just numb with it.

‘I think it’ll take a long time to ever get out of my head having to say goodbye to the two members of staff who drove the truck for me to get me into the airport along roads just lined with people.’

Pen said it took six days to get the correct paperwork for the evacuation flight, before he finally made it out, along with 125kg of dry pet food, 72 tins, and 270 litres of water.

He also brought 12 industrial size rolls of paper towels and 20 bottles of disinfectant so he could muck out their crates during the flight.

The former marine said five cats died on the journey, while he believes one dog was stabbed by the Taliban when they drove through a checkpoint.

He added: ‘There was no joy just guilt. Guilt I couldn’t get my staff out.

‘Guilt that for whatever reason I couldn’t persuade the powers-that-be to give me that paperwork a few days earlier. Guilt that I left them behind.’

Appearing on Good Morning Britain yesterday, Pen apologised for threatening to ‘f***ing destroy’ a defence official, and revealed he was the only person on his flight home.

He also dismissed the Ministry of Defence’s announcement that it helped him and his animals through the system.

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He added: ‘Nobody in the British Government facilitated my entry into that airport – I did that with the Taliban.

‘I came up to the British checkpoint, that was the first time – and this is well into the airport, the Taliban and British are stood there, there’s some barbed wire separating them – that was the first time I spoke to any British people.

‘So whoever is making any accusations or any comments needs to actually have been stood there on the ground to see how I got into that airport.

‘Nobody facilitated my entry… any interpreters or anybody else, there was me and the truck full of dogs and cats, which went into a cargo hold where you cannot put people.’

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