'Thieves' claim responsibility for Afghan kidnapping
A group of “thieves” has claimed responsibility for kidnapping an Italian relief worker from her car in the Afghan capital Kabul, a senior police official said today.
The group made the claim to authorities, said General Jamil Jumbesh, head of the Interior Ministry’s anti-terror division. He declined to say whether the group had made demands or give other details.
“A group of thieves claimed it did the kidnapping,” he said.
Four men abducted Clementina Cantoni, 32, in downtown Kabul yesterday evening.
The kidnapping has heightened “copycat” fears following the abduction of her colleague, Margaret Hassan, in Iraq.
The kidnapping of the Care International worker in Kabul followed warnings from security agencies that foreigners might be targeted in response to the arrests of suspects in the kidnappings of three United Nations election workers last year.
The agency’s director, Paul Barker, said: “Four men carrying Kalashnikovs bashed in the window of her car and took her away. They told the driver not to move or he would be shot.”
The driver had just dropped a Canadian former Care employee at a house in Kabul’s Shahr-e-Naw district when the kidnappers, driving a saloon car, cut off the vehicle and abducted the Italian at about 8.30pm, Barker said. The kidnappers then drove towards a nearby Christian cemetery.
Afghan authorities, including President Hamid Karzai, were quickly alerted to the kidnapping after the Canadian woman made a panicked call to Barker, the director said. She made it safely into the house but heard the attackers banging on the car.
Marco Formigoni, a family friend, spoke to reporters outside the Cantoni family home in an upmarket Milan neighbourhood, relaying the family’s hope “that this affair ends quickly and well”.
It was the second kidnapping of a Care worker by suspected militants in recent months. Irishwoman Margaret Hassan, a director of Care International in Iraq, was kidnapped in Baghdad in October and believed to have been murdered, although no body was recovered.
In Kabul, security forces immediately sealed off all main roads leading out of the city, said Jamil Khan, head of the criminal investigation department for the city’s police. Officers stopped and searched cars in the city centre, checking boots and under seats.
“Police are trying very hard to produce some good news,” Khan said.
Cantoni has lived in Afghanistan since 2002, says Care, one of the largest and most established international aid groups in the country. The organisation issued a brief statement calling for her release.
In Rome, the Italian foreign ministry said a crisis unit that has handled past abductions of Italians abroad was working on the case, and that foreign minister Gianfranco Fini was following the situation.
The abduction follows a string of warnings to the 3,000 foreigners living in Kabul that they could be targeted in attacks, including kidnappings.
