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Journalist recounts Afghan ordeal

Mellissa Fung says captors kept her blindfolded for four weeks in an underground cave so low the Canadian journalist could barely stand. Chains bound her hands and feet during her last week as a prisoner.

Afghan tribal elders and government officials won her safe release late on 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 on Sunday, Fung was seen meeting with Afghanistan’s intelligence chief and Canada’s ambassador.

Fung, a well-known television journalist in Canada, insisted she was fine, but apologized for the situation, despite the fact 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,” Fung said.

A Canadian official sitting nearby responded: “We’re just glad you’re here.”

Fung replied: “Yeah, so am I.”

Wearing a head scarf and muddied traditional Punjabi outfit, Fung said she had not been hurt during her ordeal, which began when she was kidnapped on Oct. 12.

The 35-year-old was handed over to intelligence officials near the town of Maydan Shah, about 50km southwest of the capital.

“They kept me blindfolded ... not all the time,” Fung was seen telling intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh in the offices of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) hours after her release.

“They dug a small hole and there was a tunnel and a cave ... The cave was very, very small,” she said.

“For the first three weeks they had somebody with me the whole time, watching me, so they did not chain me. The last week, they left me and chained me,” she said.

“They never hurt me,” she added.

Fung said she was given packets of biscuits and juice once a day for food, but had no water to drink.

NDS spokesman Sayed Ansari told a press conference earlier that three men had been arrested for the kidnapping, carried out as Fung visited a refugee camp in Kabul.

He said she had been kept in a “well,” as had a member of the royal family and former presidential candidate, Humayun Shah Asifi, who was kidnapped last month and held for about 10 days.

Asifi was kept with the adult son of a Kabul banker in a 1m-by-2m hole about 5m underground outside of the capital.

Three men had been arrested in Fung’s case, but they were only mid-level players, Ansari said. The kingpins were being sought although one had fled the country, he added.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, announcing Fung’s release late on Saturday, said no ransom had been paid.

On the videotape, taken by Afghan intelligence agents and released Sunday, Fung tells Canada’s ambassador that she is not hurt and that she hopes people won’t make “a big fuss” over her situation.

“I’m fine, really, I’m fine,” she said.

When the ambassador greeted her with a hug, Fung said: “I’m not smelling great.”

She later said she hoped to take a shower.

No officials would say whether Fung was held by the Taliban or a criminal gang, but given the location, Taliban involvement seemed likely.

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