Afghan child reveals horrors of kidnapping
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-06-07 16:47

Ismail is only 10, but the horrors of his kidnapping ordeal will probably be with him to his grave.

Rescued by Afghan authorities on Friday after three months in captivity along with his six-year-old brother Ibrahim, he quietly recounted seeing the bodies of four boys of about his age that had been cut open.

"They took us to a mountain where I saw the bodies of four dead boys," he told Reuters on Sunday at the intelligence headquarters of Kandahar, the main city in southern Afghanistan.

"They had taken out the organs from the bodies. They were on the ground at the bottom of this mountain, then the men took them away to bury them. They were boys of about our age. I thought I would not live long when I saw them. I was scared."

The intelligence chief for the south of the country, Dr. Abdullah Laghmani, said local forces were searching for the four bodies, having found one already in Panjwai district to the southwest of Kandahar where he is based.

"We have information that they (the kidnappers) killed five children, cutting their heads off and opening their stomachs to extract their kidneys," Laghmani told Reuters in an interview.

He believes the kidnappers, involved in a worrying rise in the number of disappearing children across the country, planned to sell the kidneys in Pakistan where people are prepared to pay large amounts of money to get hold of healthy organs.

There appear to be other motives, including extortion.

The kidnappers who seized Ismail and Ibrahim from their home three months ago in a village in the remote southwestern province of Nimruz initially demanded money from their grandfather, which he could not hope to pay.

Only then did they threaten to remove the boys' kidneys.

DESPERATION AND FEAR

"During these three months I was desperate and feared that I would never see my grandsons again," said a tearful Haji Anwar, an elderly man with a white turban and matching beard, flanked by his grandsons and grasping Ibrahim's tiny hand.

"We were actually planning to hold prayers for them, assuming that they had died."

Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said recently hundreds of children had been taken out of the country illegally in recent years and some had been kidnapped for their body parts.

According to Laghmani, child kidnapping is a growing problem that may have links with Islamic militant groups like the ousted Taliban and al Qaeda.

"These three men who were arrested did what they did for money, but the money will end up in the hands of al Qaeda and Taliban."

The three kidnappers detained in the latest case had been sent to Kabul for questioning, he said.

"People are worried about child kidnapping in all provinces of Afghanistan, including Herat and Kabul, so we specifically made it a part of our work to try and arrest these people," Laghmani said.

Ismail and Ibrahim had a lucky escape. Locals near the house where they were being kept, around 70 km (44 miles) southwest of Kandahar and close to Panjwai, were suspicious of the boys' presence and the fact that they never left the compound.

When the intelligence chief was alerted, he mustered a force of his own men and local police and raided the address early on Friday, arresting three men as they slept and finding four AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifles and a machine gun.

Ismail said the boys were hit by their captors, and he pointed to a scar around the base of one of his little fingers which he said the kidnappers had made, threatening to cut the finger off if he did not convince his family to pay the ransom.

The boys are now free and raring to see their mother, who is sick in hospital. "The first thing I'll do when I get home is kiss my mother's hand," smiled Ibrahim.