AFGHANISTAN: A man claiming to have kidnapped an Italian aid worker in Afghanistan yesterday said he had killed her, but a government spokesman said she was still alive.
Clementina Cantoni (32), who works for the Care International aid agency, was snatched on Monday when four gunmen stopped her vehicle on a central Kabul street and bundled her into a white Toyota car.
Cantoni's abduction raised fresh fears among Kabul's 2,000-strong foreign community of Iraq-style kidnappings by anti-government insurgents, but officials said the kidnapper was Timoor Shah, the leader of a criminal gang.
Shah, who has claimed in several conversations with media to be holding Cantoni, said he had killed her after President Hamid Karzai's government rejected his demands.
"We strangled her with a rope at nine o'clock last night," said Shah, who was contacted on Cantoni's mobile phone number.
"I will not give her body to anyone," he said.
Karzai's spokesman dismissed the man's claim and said Cantoni was still alive. "He is lying. He makes such comments in order to put pressure on the government."
An Italian embassy official, asked if he had heard of Shah's claim to have killed Cantoni said: "Yes, many times." He declined further comment.
Care International also declined to comment.
Afghanistan has seen dramatic change since US-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001. People have more freedom and opportunities but crime has surged, including kidnap for ransom. Many victims are children.
Taliban insurgents, fighting government and US-led troops in the south and east, see a big international aid effort as bolstering the government, and have killed and wounded dozens of aid and election workers, most of them Afghans.
Shah, in his talks to media, listed different demands, including the banning of a radio programme deemed "vulgar", compensation for opium farmers who have to abandon their crop, and more Islamic education.
Sources close to the negotiations later said he was no longer insisting on those demands. But officials did not reveal what he was demanding.
"I killed her because the government didn't listen or accept my demands," Shah said. He declined to elaborate, saying: "The matter is over."
The presidential spokesman said: "I have assurances from the interior minister that she is alive. The talks are going on."
On Thursday an interior ministry spokesman said he believed Shah was indeed the kidnapper but that there had been several claims of responsibility. "We are taking them all seriously," he said.