Freed hostage pleads with Taliban for 4 others

A French aid worker tearfully thanked the Taliban for releasing her Saturday after more than three weeks in captivity, and pleaded for the freedom of four colleagues still held in southern Afghanistan.

The woman -- identified only by her first name, Celine -- was kidnapped April 3 in the southwestern province of Nimruz with a French co-worker, identified as Eric, and three Afghans who worked for the charity Terre d’Enfance.

“I want to ask them to have pity in the name of their God,” she said at the French Embassy in Kabul, her voice shaking. “Eric came like me, to Afghanistan as a friend. Hashim, Rasul and Azrat are Afghans. They are Muslims. They are their brothers. They have children waiting for them.”

Purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said Celine was handed over to tribal leaders in the Maiwand district of southern Kandahar province “because she is a woman, to make good relations with the French government.”

French President Jacques Chirac said he was delighted by the release.

“Everyone must now redouble the efforts to obtain it for other hostages, with the greatest discretion,” he said.

Ahmadi reiterated the Taliban’s demands for the withdrawal of French troops.

“When the French government withdraws its forces from our country, then we will negotiate the release of this French man and three Afghans as well,” he said.

Antoine Vuillaume, president of Terre d’Enfance, or A World for Our Children, told reporters in Paris that he hoped Celine would return to France “as soon as possible, based on her physical and psychological state.... She is very tired, very hard-hit.”

The kidnapping came two weeks after Afghan authorities released five Taliban prisoners in exchange for an Italian newspaper reporter, who was abducted along with two Afghan colleagues in Helmand province on March 5. The two Afghans were killed.

The Afghan government has said the prisoner swap was a one-time deal, and has ruled out any future exchanges.