He later contributed to the newspaper's team coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan that received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and was a finalist in his own right in the category in 2010.

While he was in captivity, The New York Times collaborated with a number of media outlets, including al-Jazeera[5] and Wikipedia,[6][7] to remove news of the kidnapping from the public eye.

[15] He was described by his Times colleagues as "an intrepid yet unassuming reporter who conducts himself modestly around the office, predictably attired in neatly ironed Oxford shirts and, often, his weathered Boston Red Sox cap.

He reported seeing human bones, "Muslim prayer beads, clothing and still legible receipts and election ballots from Srebrenica", as well as shell casings and ammunition boxes in the vicinity of three large mass graves.

A key role was played by Kati Marton, an author and journalist married to the US envoy Richard Holbrooke, who was negotiating with the Serbian president Slobodan Milošević to end the Bosnian War.

Marton, who was at the time the chairwoman of the Committee to Protect Journalists, intervened repeatedly during the talks that led to the Dayton Agreement to persuade Milošević to use his influence to secure Rohde's release.

[23] A variety of other political and journalistic figures were also involved in campaigning on Rohde's behalf, including Senator Bob Dole, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Samantha Power, and David Frost.

This correspondent was arrested at the execution site by Bosnian Serb police, stripped of all documents and photos taken of the area, accused of espionage, and jailed for 10 days.

They became not so much militarised as passionately committed to fighting Milosevic's regime ... if Rohde had not – at some personal risk – set out to prove the rumours about the massacres, a great truth would have been buried along with the thousands of men from Srebrenica.

[32] Also in April 1996, Rohde won the Polk Award for foreign reporting, being cited for "risking his life to uncover the Srebrenica massacres of Bosnian Muslims, the worst genocide in Europe since the Holocaust.

"[33] Writing in The Guardian, Julian Borger declared it to be "essential reading" and commented: "It is journalism at its committed best – painstaking, compassionate, full of telling detail and rigorous in its judgments.

The American Prospect noted: Because of pervasive secrecy, little was known about how the detainees were treated until The New York Times published a story by David Rohde on January 20, 2003.

[37]In April 2009, Rohde shared in a second Pulitzer Prize, awarded to the staff of The New York Times for "its masterful, groundbreaking coverage of America's deepening military and political challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, reporting frequently done under perilous conditions.

[39] During his captivity, Rohde's colleagues at The New York Times appealed to other members of the news media not to publish any stories relating to the abduction.