KABUL, 20 May 2005 — A man claiming to have abducted an Italian aid worker in Kabul threatened to kill her yesterday unless his demands were met, even though Afghan officials said there was no imminent threat to her life.
“The deadline we had given yesterday runs out today at 10:00 am (0530 GMT)...and we might kill her,” an alleged abductor calling himself Temur Shah told AFP, speaking from kidnapped aid worker Clementina Cantoni’s cell phone.
Shah, whose identity remains murky, could not be reached by phone after making his threat and Cantoni’s welfare was impossible to establish hours after the deadline ran out.
But Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said security officials were in contact with the kidnappers of the Italian aid worker and so far they believed that she was safe.
“As far as I have received information up to now, I can only say that some government officials in the security sector are in contact,” Abdullah told a news conference in Tokyo where he was on a three-day visit.
“And they are aware of the safety of the kidnapped, but I have no further information,” he said.
It remains unclear whether Shah is linked to a criminal gang, originally thought to have been behind the kidnapping, or if he has ties to militants.
Local media have named Shah as the suspected kidnapper, but Afghan officials have yet to make any comment on the suspected abductor’s identity or his alleged involvement in Cantoni’s disappearance.
Cantoni, 32, who works for CARE International, was dragged from her car by armed men in the Qala-e-Mosa district of Kabul on Monday evening.
Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said police were in contact with the kidnappers and that no firm deadline had been set for their demands to be met despite Shah’s claims.
“The negotiation with the kidnappers is ongoing and there is no set deadline. We have not come to any agreement yet,” Mashal told AFP.
Shah said that the Italian woman may be killed yesterday if the Afghan government does not accept demands including a ban on alcohol and a television music program.
Selling alcohol to Afghans is already illegal in Afghanistan although it is widely sold to foreigners at a variety of bars and restaurants.
It remains unclear whether Shah’s public demands, which have been aired in the media, are in line with the demands the kidnappers have made to Afghan authorities.
“It seems that the government does not want to negotiate with us and accept our demands. They are trying to locate us and arrest us,” he said.
Shah said the first deadline had been at 7:00 pm Wednesday and the kidnappers had extended the deadline to yesterday morning and would not extend it again.
CARE International said Cantoni had been a humanitarian aid worker for 10 years and had lived in Afghanistan since March 2002.
Since September 2003 she has managed a project that provides food and income-generating activities for 11,000 widows and their children.
A group of widows with the CARE project appealed yesterday for Cantoni’s release.
“She did so much to help us. When I heard that she had been kidnapped I felt my husband had died all over again. If she is not released I am afraid of sinking back into poverty,” said 30-year-old Asma Siddiqi who works on a widow’s livelihood project.
A spate of attacks and kidnap attempts targeting foreigners in Kabul have emerged in recent weeks, leading to a tightening of security for the thousands of foreigners who work in the city.
Foreign aid and United Nations staff have been advised to restrict all unessential movement, avoid restaurants and crowded places and observe a 10:00 p.m. curfew.
In October last year three foreign United Nations workers were taken hostage by militants believed to be in league with a criminal gang and held for a month before being released unharmed.
