Afghan police rescue snatched aid worker

AFGHAN police rescued a German aid worker — who was snatched while dining with her husband at a restaurant in the capital Kabul — and arrested four suspected kidnappers in the sting operation yesterday, officials said.

Hundreds of police surrounded a house to free the 31-year-old woman in a raid in western Kabul not far from the area where she was taken captive on Saturday, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemerai Bashary.

He said authorities have arrested and are interrogating “four suspects who are directly involved in this case”. He described the men as the ringleader and three of his friends.

Preliminary investigations show that the gang was criminal — not Islamic insurgents — and that they demanded $1 million (€742,400) for her release.

Amrullah Saleh, the head of the Afghan intelligence service, said the leader of the criminal gang had been freed from a northern Afghan prison two months earlier.

In Germany, the Christian aid organisation that Ms Meier worked for, Ora International, said she was doing “well considering the circumstances”.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier voiced “relief and great joy” at her release.

The Afghan government came under heavy criticism after exchanging five Taliban prisoners for the release of an Italian journalist in March.

Worried that hostage-taking would become an industry, the government has ruled out any further swaps.