Freed from an Indian prison in a hostage swap that ended a hijacking

Below is my understanding:
“Soon after" is an idiom taken together as an adverb of time. Soon after modifies the verb, "addressed".

The soon after compares one happening to another happening.
Implication: The speaker and the audience are being treated to a comparison of two events. One event(freed) happened before the 2nd event "addressed".
Happening 2 (addressed) was realized a short time after Happening 1 (Freed) (a particular time or event)
Example: Mary was born exactly at noon on January 1, 2015 and Martha, her twin, followed soon after.

Soon after means in a short while, later.

Thus, here it's supposed to modify 2nd event verb, "happened".

The system will reset the tag automatically once the question has been answered a number of times sufficient for accurately calculating a difficulty level.

Meanwhile, while one choice is better than the others, there are some others that are debatably OK.

There are three ways in which "soon after," or simply "after," can be correctly used.

One is as a conjunction. For example:

John went home soon after the show ended.

In that example, "soon after" connects the two clauses "John went home" and "the show ended."

"Soon after" can also be used as a preposition, in which case it must be followed by a noun or by another part of speech serving as a noun, such as a gerund. For example:

Soon after the show's ending, John went home.

In that example "soon after" serves as a preposition, and the object of the preposition is the gerund "the show's ending."

The third way is as an adverb. For example:

The show ended, and John left soon after.

In that example, "soon after" works adverbially to express when John left.

Now let's consider (C).

(C) Soon after freed from an Indian prison in a hostage swap that ended a hijacking in 1999, Mr Azhar addressed a crowd of 10,000 people in the Pakistani city of Karachi.

The way in which "soon after" functions in (C) is a mix of all three ways, and not clearly any of those ways.

If (C) were to say "soon after being freed", then "being freed" would be a gerund and would logically serve as the object of the preposition "soon after." However, in this case "soon after" is followed by a verb "freed." This structure does not make sense, and the resulting sentence does not convey a logical meaning.

In other words, in this case, what follows "soon after" has to be something that the events described in the sentence's main clause were "soon after." "Freed" is not a thing that events can be soon after. "Being freed" is a thing that other events can be soon after.

The following version is correct.

Soon after his being freed from an Indian prison in a hostage swap that ended a hijacking in 1999, Mr Azhar addressed a crowd of 10,000 people in the Pakistani city of Karachi.

The following, in which "soon after" is used adverbially is also correct. Notice, now "soon after" is followed by a verb, "addressed," but since, in this case, "soon after" is functioning adverbially, this placement makes sense.

Mr Azhar was freed from an Indian prison in a hostage swap that ended a hijacking in 1999 and soon after addressed a crowd of 10,000 people in the Pakistani city of Karachi.

MartyTargetTestPrep thanks for such an awesome elaboration of use of "soon after". It definitely clears a lot of doubts.

Don't be arrogant, look at the statistics.

Why is B wrong? Can somebody clarify please?

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