Irish hostage faces death ‘in three days’

THE second hostage drama involving an Irish citizen took a turn for the worse yesterday when the kidnap gang responsible issued a three-day deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan.

The Taliban splinter group said if their demands were not met by this Wednesday, they would kill Co Armagh woman, Annetta Flanigan, and her colleagues, Shqipe Hebibi from Kosovo and Angelito Nayan, who is from the Philippines.

Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern was being kept briefed on the latest developments last night but his office made no official statement. Mr Ahern had earlier unreservedly condemned the kidnappings and called for the "immediate and unconditional release" of the hostages.

The three United Nations employees, who were helping to prepare for the country's first free general elections since the Taliban regime was overthrown, were abducted last Thursday in the capital, Kabul.

Video footage was released by their captors to a television station in Pakistan yesterday which showed them looking shaken and frightened, sitting hunched together against the bare wall of a room in an unidentified location while an unseen man questioned them in broken English.

Ms Flanigan and Ms Hebibi were seen crying and at one point their captor appeared to single out Ms Flanigan and tell her to stop. All three attempted to explain their role in Afghanistan but their answers were rejected.

The kidnap gang, who identified themselves in phone calls to news stations as the Jaish-e-Muslimeen, the JM or Army of Muslims, used the 15-minute video to outline their demands for the removal of foreign troops and the release of Afghan prisoners.

Their hostages appeared to be healthy and physically unharmed in the video but the UN yesterday issued a statement saying all three were in need of medical assistance.

UN official in Kabul, Manoel de Almeida e Silva, described the kidnapping as an inexplicable "act of violence against three individuals who are working towards prosperity, reconstruction and peace in this country".

He said: "We worry about them, about their medical and physical condition, and about their emotional well-being. All three require medical attention and the best response to such a situation is their immediate release the most heartfelt wish of the parents, brothers and sisters, husband, friends and colleagues of Annetta, Lito and Shqipe."

Ms Flanigan, 43, is from Richill in Co Armagh, and practised as a solicitor in Portadown before going to work for the UN in the Balkans and Africa. She is married to a Spaniard who is also a UN official and both were planning to travel to the North for Christmas to be with Ms Flanigan's parents, who run a furniture business in Richill.

She is the second Irish woman to be held by foreign kidnap gangs. Tomorrow marks two weeks since Margaret Hassan, 59, an aid agency director originally from Dalkey, Co Dublin, was abducted in Iraq.