KABUL, 25 November 2004 — Three UN workers freed after almost four weeks in captivity in Afghanistan met President Hamid Karzai yesterday and said freedom felt “wonderful” as the first of them flew home for a reunion with his family.

“It is a wonderful feeling that we have been sharing with our families, friends and colleagues here in Kabul,” Annetta Flanigan said in a statement on behalf of the hostages.

Angelito Nayan, a Filipino diplomat who was seconded to oversee the country’s Oct. 9 elections, flew home yesterday afternoon but his two female fellow ex-hostages remain in the country, a UN source told AFP.

Karzai presented carpets as gifts to Flanigan of Northern Ireland, Shqipe Hebibi of Kosovo and Nayan, in the morning meeting at Kabul’s presidential palace.

“We’re very glad by the grace of God our two sisters and a brother who were taken by the hostage-takers, by the criminals, were released safe and sound,” Karzai told reporters.

Before Nayan’s departure, the trio then went to meet colleagues at the joint UN-Afghan electoral commission. They had been in Afghanistan working on the presidential election when they were snatched at gunpoint in downtown Kabul on Oct. 28.

All three appeared healthy and happy when they appeared for press photos. Hebibi and Flanigan were draped in colorful Afghan silk scarves.

Nayan wore a traditional green Afghan silk robe similar to that worn by the president.

“Since we were released we have learned of the many statements of support and expressions of solidarity by Afghan personalities and ordinary men and women, some of whom even offered to take our place as hostages,” Flanigan said after meeting colleagues at the electoral commission.

“We are humbled and very, very grateful for this,” she added.

The trio, held for 27 days until their release early Tuesday in Kabul, spent their first day of freedom recuperating, taking hot showers and eating good food, colleagues said.

The kidnappings, the first of foreign UN or aid workers in Kabul since the Taleban regime was ousted three years ago, had triggered fears of a spate of Iraq-style abductions of foreigners.

The three were dropped off at an unspecified location in Kabul, unharmed and in apparently good health.

Authorities were tight-lipped about the circumstances of their release, denying that any deal to free Taleban prisoners or pay a ransom was struck with their captors.

The identity of the kidnappers also remains a mystery.

A shadowy Taleban splinter group claimed to hold them. It issued a series of demands, mainly for the release of 24 Taleban prisoners, through at least five spokesmen in telephone contact with journalists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But Afghan officials have said they are pursuing a “criminal gang” in their hunt for the hostage-takers.

A spokesman for the Jaishul Muslimeen splinter group said that mediators promised to free 24 Taleban prisoners in exchange for the hostages.

“Our prisoners have not been released yet, but last night we were told that our prisoners were being collected from different places and they would be released after all of them are brought to one place,” Jaishul Muslimeen chief Syed Akbar Agha told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press.

Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali has rejected that claim.

“No prisoners were released, no money was paid, no demand was accepted,” he told reporters Tuesday.