UN workers ‘abandoned’ by Afghan captors

THREE UN workers, including Irish woman Annetta Flanigan, held hostage in Afghanistan for nearly four weeks were “abandoned” by their captors in Kabul, officials said yesterday.

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 of Ms Flanigan from Co Armagh, Northern Ireland, Philippine diplomat Angelito Nayan and Shqipe Hebibi of Kosovo. 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 yesterday.

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

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, said today they had freed the hostages against an “assurance that the release of our 24 people would begin today”.

Mr Jalali, however, 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 were wounded.

The minister would not elaborate on either the identity of the kidnappers or the efforts to catch them. A senior Defence Ministry official said the raids may have spooked the captors.

The dramatic release of Ms Flanigan was welcomed by the Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern said.

“I am absolutely delighted that Annetta and her colleagues have been released unharmed and are being reunited with their families,” he said. “I know that my sense of relief is shared by all Irish people.”

Mr Ahern also paid tribute to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his staff, and to the Afghan government for their “patient and tireless efforts which led to the successful release of Annetta and her co-workers”.