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TechnoratiAfghan police rescued a female German aid worker just hours after she appeared in a video asking her government to secure her release.
(Photo: Tolo TV)This image from video made available by Tolo TV, a private Afghan television station, and broadcast on Sunday, Aug. 19, 2007, shows what it said was a female German aid worker who was kidnapped Saturday from a restaurant in Kabul, Afghanistan. The woman identified herself as Christina Barbara Meier.
Christina Meier, 31, who works for a small Christian aid organization, was dining with her husband at a restaurant in Kabul on Sunday when four armed assailants carried out the bold midday kidnapping. Unlike the Taliban militants who are currently holding captive 19 South Korean aid volunteers in Afghanistan, the “criminal gang” behind the latest abduction was reportedly motivated by money.
"The motive behind the kidnapping was mainly ransom. They had demanded a big sum – about $1 million," ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told reporters after a dramatic pre-dawn swoop Monday for the German captive.
Police colonel Ghulam Rasoul, who took part in the operation, said that six kidnappers were arrested, but Bashary said only four, including the gang leader, were in custody and being questioned.
"We located the house where she was kept. We surrounded the house, and called on the kidnappers to surrender to police. They came out, one by one, and surrendered, and then we freed the hostage. She's fine," Rasoul said, according to Agence France-Presse.
Prior to the rescue, Meier appeared in a video that was broadcasted on private TV stations in Afghanistan, stating, “I am OK.”
"I am OK. There are not threats against me. I want from my country to do what it can for my release," she said in Dari, the official language in Afghanistan, reading from a piece of paper.
Although the turbaned man who appeared in the video after Meier said his group was not the Taliban, like the members of the militant group, the man called for the release of “innocent prisoners.”
"We are not bad people. We are a special network," the man said at the end of the video.
Meier’s kidnapping was the latest in the string of hostage dramas in Afghanistan that have heightened fears of abductions and came amid negotiations for the lives of 19 South Korean aid volunteers who have been held captive since their July 19 capture.
On Saturday, a Taliban spokesman said face-to-face negotiations with a South Korean delegation over the fate of 19 kidnapped aid volunteers had failed and future talks were unlikely.
After two rounds of in-person talks – with the last meeting held Thursday – the Taliban complained of lack of progress and said that they are currently deciding the fate of the Koreans.
“The negotiations have failed. The Taliban leading council is making its decision now on the fate of the hostages,” Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP.
Since the beginning, the rebels have demanded the release of jailed militants in exchange for the hostages, which originally numbered 23, and now numbers 19 after the deaths of two male captives and the release of two female captives. The Afghan and U.S. governments, however, have repeatedly made it clear that the release of prisoners was not an option.
Both Aghan President Hamid Karzai and U.S. President George W. Bush have said releasing rebels would further encourage kidnapping as an industry in the insurgency-wracked country and support terrorism.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai was criticized by the United States and other Western countries earlier this year for giving into terrorism after he released five Taliban prisoners in exchange for an Italian reporter in March. He had vowed that the exchange would be a one-time deal. Continue »
