Journalist abducted in Kabul is released

A kidnapped Canadian journalist said captors kept her blindfolded for four weeks in an underground cave so small she could barely stand. Chains bound her hands and feet during her last week as a prisoner.

Afghan tribal elders and government officials won the safe release of Mellissa Fung late Saturday, 28 days after she was taken from a refugee camp in Kabul while conducting interviews for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

In a video released Sunday, Fung was seen meeting with Afghanistan’s intelligence chief and Canada’s ambassador. Fung insisted she was fine, and apologized for the situation, though the refugee camp where she conducted interviews had been visited by many journalists previously and was considered safe to visit.

“I’m sorry for all the trouble,” she said.

A Canadian official sitting nearby responded: “We’re just glad you’re here.” Fung replied: “Yeah, so am I.”

Fung was held captive in a dangerous region of Wardak province overrun by Taliban militants. No officials would say whether Fung was held by the Taliban or a criminal gang, but given the location, Taliban involvement seemed likely.

Crimes against Westerners have risen in Kabul in recent weeks. An aid worker with dual South African-British citizenship was killed by Taliban gunmen in a Kabul neighborhood last month, and a French aid worker was kidnapped at gunpoint in Kabul a week ago.

And one day before Fung’s release, another Western female journalist, Dutch national Joanie de Rijke, was freed a week after being kidnapped, Belgian officials said.

Fung, a well-known television journalist in Canada, was taken on Oct. 12. Neither her abduction nor De Rijke’s was widely reported. Western news organizations honored requests by the reporters’ employers and governments not to report the abductions to protect the women’s lives during efforts to win their release.

The French aid worker was abducted on a Kabul street. An Afghan intelligence agent died during the kidnapping.