Flanigan ready to go home after ordeal

UN aid worker Anetta Flanigan is preparing to fly home tonight after she and two other hostages were abandoned by their kidnappers.

UN aid worker Annetta Flanigan is preparing to fly home tonight after she and two other hostages were abandoned by their kidnappers.

Afghan officials remained vague about the identity of the kidnappers as investigations continued.

They said armed raids by US and Afghan forces had increased pressure on the captors, and no deals were done to win the release.

Officials said Annetta Flanigan from Co Armagh, Northern Ireland, Philippine diplomat Angelito Nayan and Shqipe Hsebibi of Kosovo were “abandoned” by their captors in the Afghan capital, Kabul, early this morning.

After doctors at a Nato base in Kabul gave them the all-clear, the trio took time to phone loved ones and wind down after their ordeal, a UN spokesman said.

“They are happy and relieved to see people from their own environment, the people they work with,” spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said.

They will return to their home countries “very soon”, he said, although there was no sign any of them would leave before Wednesday.

Armed men seized the trio from a marked UN vehicle on a busy Kabul street on October 28, the first abduction of foreigners in the city since the fall of the Taliban three years ago.

Afghan officials have said all along they suspected a criminal group of kidnapping the group for ransom, though Taliban-linked militants claimed responsibility.

Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said it was ”possible” the group called Jaish-al Muslimeen had hired bandits to abduct the three, who were in Afghanistan to help organise last month’s presidential elections.

The group, whose name means Army of Muslims, had demanded that Afghan authorities and the US military release jailed comrades.

Syed Khalid, a spokesman for the militants, today it had freed the hostages against an “assurance that the release of our 24 people would begin today”.

But Jalali insisted that neither a ransom nor prisoners were being handed over in return for the hostages’ lives.

“None of the hostage-takers conditions have been met,” he told a news conference. “All those people who had a hand in this – directly or indirectly - will be brought to justice.”

US forces searching for the hostages raided two houses in the west of Kabul on Monday, though around 10 people detained were all quickly released.

More important may have been a gun battle in Qarabagh, an area north of Kabul in which Jalali said one person died and four more wounded.

The minister would not elaborate on either the identity of the kidnappers or the efforts to catch them.

However, a senior Defence Ministry official said the raids may have spooked the captors.

“Maybe they knew the guys we caught would tell us where they were, so they brought them to Kabul and set them free,” the official said.

The release prompted jubilation among officials and relatives.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who won the October election, said he was “delighted” at the end of the crisis, which threatened to throw a shadow over his inauguration next month.

It was also a relief to foreign aid workers and UN staff among Kabul’s 2,000-strong expat community.

Tracts of the country are already off-limits to aid organisations because of a stubborn Taliban-led insurgency; 24 aid workers have died in violence so far this year.

“Had it not ended this way, it would have been a big setback to a lot of reconstruction efforts here,” said Paul Barker, the head of CARE International, one of the largest relief groups here.

Still, he said it was too early for aid organisations to move into the troubled south and east – a return urged by US military commanders.

“There are still plenty of serious incidents in all corners of the country,” Barker said.