Canadian journalist Mellissa Fung, recently held hostage for four weeks in Afghanistan, said on Wednesday she was freed in a prisoner swap arranged by Afghan intelligence for the family of her abductors.
In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC), Fung said her captors were a criminal family who made a living kidnapping foreigners and demanding ransoms and that she had been randomly targeted.
“I now understand that Afghan intelligence had sort of fingered the family of the ringleader of this gang and had arrested a whole bunch of them,” Fung told CBC. “And it was a prisoner exchange that they agreed to release the family if the group would release me and that’s what ended up happening.”
Fung, 35, was freed on Saturday after being kidnapped in Kabul on Oct. 12 and held captive in a hole in the ground for 28 days, sometimes chained and blindfolded.
The CBC reporter was handed over to Afghan intelligence officials late on Saturday near the town of Maydan Shah, about 50km southwest of the capital.
On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper denied reports from Afghanistan and Pakistan that Taliban leaders or “dangerous militants” were released in exchange for Fung’s freedom or that any ransom had been paid.
In the interview, Fung recounted how she was taken hostage as she was leaving a refugee camp she had visited outside Kabul for a news story when “a car drove up.”
“It happened so quickly,” she said. “Two guys with big guns came out of the car. One of them grabbed me, the other pointed a gun at our fixer. There was a bit of a struggle. I think I hit one and then he stabbed me in the shoulder, and then next thing I knew, I was inside the car on the floor of the backseat and they were driving off.”
She described her captors as 19 or 20 and nervous.
“They said, ‘We’re not going to kill you. We just want money,’” she said.
Fung tried to hide a mobile phone in her pants, but a beep signaled an incoming message and her captors took it away. She had lost a contact lens in the scuffle too and so could not see well.
But she managed to spot that they eventually stopped at the base of a mountain, hiked for several hours, then traveled by motorcycle to a village where she was introduced to her new home — a hole in the ground.
The hole was covered by wood and dirt, and two air vents leading to the surface were hidden by rocks. She could hear passers-by and her captors warned her not to scream to bring attention to herself.
The brother of one of the kidnappers mostly watched over her, Fung said.
Kidnapping was a “family business” for them, she said, explaining that her keeper had spoken of five brothers, a sister and mother involved in the venture, and of their father in Pakistan who negotiated ransoms.
“He [also] had an uncle who was there with him and the other people sort of in that group where I was staying were all his friends,” she said. “They said they were Taliban, but I never really believed they were Taliban. They didn’t seem organized enough or political enough to be Taliban.”
Fung said that to pass the time she “made plans” for moving to Toronto, for a Christmas party, for a vacation, and kept a diary that was later lost. Over time, her stab wound scabbed over and healed.
On the day of her release, she was told she would be freed, blindfolded and walked to a parked car on a desolate road. The brother who had been with her for most of the 28 days told her he was upset that no ransom had been paid.
He said goodbye and “a man took me and said: ‘Hello, how are you?’ And put me in the back of the car,” she said.
There were armed guards all around.
Later, Fung learned that this new acquaintance was an Afghan intelligence officer.
Together, they drove to Kabul and she called her father on a mobile phone from the backseat of the car to reassure him that she was OK.
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