Italian woman held in Afghanistan for more than three weeks released
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Clementina Cantoni, 32, was safely at the Interior Ministry and has spoken to her mother by telephone, Interior Ministry spokesman Latfullah Mashal told The Associated Press.
Cantoni ''is in good health, given the 24-day ordeal she went through,'' he said later at a news conference.
No ransom was paid and no concessions were given to her kidnappers, he said.
Combined pressure from the Afghan public, President Hamid Karzai, tribal leaders and Muslim clerics helped win her release, Mashal said.
Another ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Cantoni was set free in Logar province, just south of Kabul, where police picked her up.
Cantoni was abducted by armed men May 16 as she was being driven to her home in the capital, Kabul, where she was working for CARE International on a project helping Afghan widows and their families.
Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini expressed ''enormous relief'' over Cantoni's release, according to the ANSA and Apcom news agencies. Fini made the remarks during a visit to Luxembourg.
In Milan, family friend Marco Formigoni, who was with Cantoni's parents when they received the news, screamed ''She's free! She's free!'' according to Sky TG 24.
''We are very emotional and very happy,'' added Beatrice Spadaccini, an Italian who works with CARE International in Kabul. ''We know she is well, we know she called home.''
Spadaccini expressed gratitude to the Italian and Afghan governments as well as to ''all of Clementina's friends who have shown their solidarity and their desire to have her back.''
Afghan officials had been optimistic about her release in recent days.
Last month, a video of Cantoni was broadcast on local television. On it, she was shown sitting as two men next to her pointed assault rifles at her head.
