[Tolo News] A Dutch aid worker who was kidnapped by unknown gunnies in June in Afghanistan has been sprung after being held for 81 days, the Dutch foreign ministry said late Thursday.Anja de Beer was recovering in the Dutch embassy in Kabul
...the capital of Afghanistan. Home to continuous fighting from 1992 to 1996 between the forces of would-be strongman and Pak ISI/Jamaat-e-Islami sock puppet Gulbuddin Hekmayar and the Northern Alliance, a period which won Hek the title
Most Evil Man in the Worldand didn't do much for the reputations of the Northern Alliance guys either....
and was "doing pretty well considering the circumstances," the ministry said in a statement.
An experienced aid worker who spent more than 15 years working for UN agencies, de Beer had been posted in Kabul for several years and was working for the Swiss non-governmental organization Helvetas when she was snatched on the streets in broad daylight.
The Dutch foreign ministry said she had managed to speak with her family already as well as with Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders who said he was "relieved" to hear about her release.
"I'm happy that 81 days of uncertainty have come to an end," he said in the ministry's statement.
De Beer herself told Dutch public broadcaster NOS late Thursday that she had been "treated well" by her abductors. "They gave me food and drink and I was not mistreated," she said in a brief phone call with the channel.
She added that she had been kept in isolation by her captors and was only given a few hours' notice of her impending release.
De Beer was kidnapped at gunpoint by four gunnies on June 22 outside her office in the Afghan capital's Taimani area, where other aid workers and journalists live and work.
She had previously worked with the Red Thingy from 2000 to 2001 on projects to help widows and orphans in Afghanistan, the Dutch press agency ANP said.
Aid workers in Afghanistan have increasingly been casualties of a surge in holy warrior violence in recent years.
In April the bullet-riddled bodies of five Afghan workers for Save the Children were found after they were kidnapped by gunnies in the strife-torn southern province of Uruzgan.
And last month a female German aid worker was also captured in broad daylight in Kabul, highlighting the growing risk to humanitarian officials in the war-torn country.
De Beer said she intended to return to the Netherlands now that her ordeal was over.
Her family has asked the media to allow her to recover in peace.
So far no one has claimed to be behind the kidnapping.
"We still don't know who kidnapped her and why," a front man for Helvetas told the Dutch centre-left daily De Volkskrant.