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Afghan militants threaten united nations hostages { November 1 2004 }

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   http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/international/asia/01afghan.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/international/asia/01afghan.html

November 1, 2004
KIDNAPPINGS
Afghan Militants Release Video of Hostages
By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 31 - Militants holding three foreign United Nations staff members in Afghanistan released a videotape on Sunday showing their hostages, and they said the three would be killed if demands for the release of prisoners and the withdrawal of foreign troops were not met by noon Wednesday.

The video, delivered to the Arab news network Al Jazeera and broadcast Sunday morning, was the strongest indication yet that the group Jaish-e-Muslimeen, or Army of Muslims, was holding the hostages as it has claimed, and was adopting the media-oriented tactics of kidnapping groups in Iraq.

The three hostages - Angelito Nayan, a Filipino diplomat, and two women who are election workers, Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland and Shqipe Hebibi from Kosovo - were seized Thursday from their car on a busy street in Kabul. They appeared unharmed but drawn in the video, sitting together against a wall. They were guarded by a militant with a black-and-white checkered scarf wrapped around his face.

Leaders of Jaish-e-Muslimeen issued their conditions in telephone calls to news agencies on Sunday. They demanded that the United Nations and the United States and other foreign nations withdraw their forces from Afghanistan, that all of their Muslim prisoners in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, be released and that military and police operations to find the hostages and their captors be halted.

"The U.N. should leave Afghanistan, and it should call Britain and America's meddling in Afghanistan illegal," the leader of the group, Akbar Agha, 47, told Reuters.

He demanded that Kosovo and Britain withdraw their forces from Afghanistan. "Those who have no military involvement in Afghanistan, like the Philippines, must call Britain and America's meddling in Afghanistan illegal and must stop its contributions through the U.N. for America and Britain's activities," he said.

He also called for the release of all Muslim prisoners in Afghanistan and Cuba, "be they Taliban or Al Qaeda."

Kosovo, a province of Serbia, is under United Nations administration, and it has no troops in Afghanistan. Britain has 1,700 troops here, most of whom are part of the peacekeeping force that is based in Kabul, the capital, and two northern cities.

The United Nations spokesman in Afghanistan, Manoel de Almeida e Silva, confirmed that the three hostages shown in the video were the three United Nations employees abducted Thursday in Kabul, and he appealed for their release.

"We can confirm that the video shows our colleagues, Annetta, Lito and Shqipe,'' he said. "We are relieved that they appear to be unharmed. We call for their safe and immediate release."

At an earlier news briefing, he said: "We miss them. And like their friends and families, we worry about them, about their medical and physical conditions and about their emotional well-being."

"They come from faraway lands with habits, cultures and traditions that are very diverse. But they have at least one thing in common - their commitment to serve people who can benefit from their knowledge and expertise. This is why they volunteered to come and work in Afghanistan."

The leaders of Jaish-e-Muslimeen are known to be former Taliban commanders and are thought to be living in Pakistan, where they first contacted journalists to claim responsibility for the kidnappings. But the Afghan police and intelligence agents are concentrating their investigation on Paghman, a rural area west of Kabul, and they say that a group with criminal links was probably responsible for the abduction and may still be holding the hostages.

"We don't think they are far from Kabul," an Interior Ministry spokesman, Lutfullah Mashal, said of the hostages. "We don't think that they are out of the country. Probably some terrorists are involved in this, but I should say that the one kidnapper that we saw on television was most likely neither a Talib nor a member of Al Qaeda."

Jaish-e-Muslimeen is a breakaway group of the Taliban that shares the same aims as that militant religious movement but has adopted different tactics, said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistani journalist who spoke to Mr. Agha recently. The group is opposed to President Hamid Karzai and the election process, wants foreign troops out of Afghanistan and wants a government led by the mujahedeen fighters and guided by Shariah law, the legal code of Islam, he said.



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company


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