Kidnapped Reporter Freed In Afghanistan

A Canadian TV journalist abducted and held for four weeks in Afghanistan was freed Saturday after Afghan tribal leaders persuaded the kidnappers to release her, officials said.

Mellissa Fung, a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., was taken hostage Oct. 12 after reporting in a refugee camp in Kabul.

Fung had been taken out of Kabul by her captors and held in a dangerous Taliban-controlled region of Wardak province, one province west of Kabul.

She was freed after tribal elders and provincial council members negotiated her release, said Adam Khan Serat, spokesman for the provincial governor in Wardak. Serat said there was no ransom involved.

John Cruickshank, publisher of CBC news, said that Fung called her parents Saturday and told them she was on her way to Kabul and was safe and healthy. He called Fung's release "great news" and credited the Afghan government for securing her freedom.

"She sounded terrific. She said she hadn't been harmed in any way," Cruickshank said.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper "got directly involved from the first day, just to make it clear how serious this was for the Canadian government," Cruickshank said.

"This is wonderful news for her family, for her colleagues and for all Canadians," Harper said.

After speaking to Fung, he told the media, "She sounded in remarkably good spirits under the circumstances. She said that she feels OK."

"I would like to pay particular tribute to our Afghan partners who were instrumental in making this happen," Harper said.

"I spoke with President (Hamid) Karzai immediately after this abduction occurred. He promised me the full cooperation and engagement of his government and he delivered."

Reporters for Western news outlets in Afghanistan, including The Associated Press, had been aware of Fung's abduction since the day she was taken, but the CBC requested that her case not be publicized for safety considerations while officials tried to negotiate her release.

"In the interest of Mellissa's safety and that of other working journalists in the region, on the advice of security experts, we made the decision to ask media colleagues not to publish news of her abduction," Cruickshank said in a statement.

"All of the efforts made by the security experts were focused on Mellissa's safe and timely release. For this reason, we can only share general information about the events of the last three weeks," he said.

Afghan news organizations published reports of Fung's abductions, but no Western outlets did.

"I would like to thank members of the press, who -- understanding the grave risks to Miss Fung's life -- have deferred publishing this story," Harper said.

Fung was on her second tour as a correspondent for CBC in Afghanistan. She had been in Kabul for nearly a month researching a story about the refugee situation in and around Kabul.

She is the second abducted foreign journalist to be released in two days. On Friday, a Dutch journalist kidnapped just outside of the capital, Kabul, was freed unharmed after nearly a week in captivity.

Joanie de Rijke, 43, was kidnapped Nov. 1 while working on a story for Belgium's P magazine on the deaths of 10 French troops in a Taliban ambush in August.

Michael Lescroart, editorial chief at the magazine's publisher De Vrije Pers, said Friday that the kidnappers had demanded a ransom, but he declined to say if one had been paid.

Security has deteriorated around Afghanistan over the last two years, although violence against Westerners in the capital has been relatively rare until recently.

But Kabul has seen a spike in crimes against Westerners in the last several weeks. A dual citizen South African-British aid worker was shot and killed by Taliban gunmen in a Kabul neighborhood last month, and a French aid worker was kidnapped at gunpoint in Kabul this past week.