French photographer held four months by Afghan insurgents escapes

[NBCNews]

By Hamid Shalizi and Dylan Welch, Reuters

Follow @NBCNewsWorld  KABUL - A French photographer kidnapped in Afghanistan four months ago  fled his captors on Monday and was now safe in the hands of officials from his  embassy, the Afghan Interior Ministry said.  


A second French hostage in  Afghanistan was freed by his captors, a spokesman for France's foreign ministry  said, without providing any details. Twenty-nine-year-old freelance  Pierre Borghi had been chained up in a crudely dug hole covered by a trap door  but managed to escape and reached a checkpoint manned by government security  guards in central Wardak province, an Afghan official said.

Borghi, from  Grenoble in southeastern France, was brought to the Interior Ministry's  headquarters in Kabul at about 4:30 p.m. (1200 GMT) and left in the company of  French embassy officials less than an hour later, ministry spokesman Sediq  Sediqqi said.

He was in good health, Sediqqi said. The French embassy  declined to comment.

Borghi was snatched by four armed men from a street  in a busy area of the capital Kabul on Nov. 28 and had been held in several  locations, including the back of a vehicle, the Afghan official said.

He  said it was likely that Borghi was first taken by organized criminals and then  sold to insurgents.

The captors, wearing turbans wrapped around their  faces, had filmed Borghi several times and told him they were, variously,  Taliban, Haqqani and al Qaeda, the official said.

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