Major [Jill Metzger] Tells Officials of Mystery Kidnap

A U.S. Air Force officer who went missing for three days says someone stuffed an object in her jeans pocket with a note saying it was bomb and telling her to go to a site in Bishkek, where kidnappers grabbed her, Kyrgyz authorities said Saturday.

They said Maj. Jill Metzger reported feeling as if she were in a trance as she followed the instructions.

U.S. officials said the 33-year-old officer was in "stable condition" after she turned up Friday night and had been moved to another American base in the region.

Metzger disappeared Tuesday in Bishkek, capital of this former Soviet state in Central Asia, while shopping at the TsUM department store for souvenirs before a scheduled departure from the country on Friday.

Her disappearance touched off an extensive search by Kyrgyz police and by U.S. military personnel, including 22 special agents.

But no trace was found until late Friday when Metzger knocked on the door of a house in Kant, a town about 22 miles from Bishkek, and told its residents she had been abducted, Kyrgyz Deputy Interior Minister Omurbek Suvanaliyev said.

Military officials said Metzger was a newlywed and had been scheduled to travel with her husband to Jamaica for a belated 10-day honeymoon in the Caribbean.

Metzger told Kyrgyz police she had been abducted by three young men and a woman in a minibus and held in a rural area about 30 miles from the capital, Suvanaliyev told The Associated Press.

Kemilbek Kiyazov, chief of the Chuysk regional police department, said, "Her first testimony was that when she split up with her group in the department store, someone put a hard object and a note saying it was an explosive in a back pocket of her jeans.

"In the note there were also detailed instructions about where to go and what to do. Metzger says it was as if she were in a trance and fulfilling someone else's wishes."

Kiyazov said the major reported that she was met by three men and a woman who put her into a vehicle, took her to a house and placed her in a dark room. He quoted her as saying she managed to escape after an abductor brought her food and she struck him.

Kiyazov, who said he personally talked with Metzger, told AP that her blondish hair had been dyed dark brown and her hands were stained with dye. He said it would be necessary to question her again to get more details, "but Metzger said she really wanted to get a good sleep."

Capt. Anna Carpenter, a spokeswoman at the U.S. air base at Bishkek's Manas airport, where Metzger had been temporarily stationed, said the major was in "stable condition."

Metzger was taken several hours later to another base in the region, Carpenter said, but declined to say where. Manas is the only U.S. base in Kyrgyzstan.

The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that "it now appears that Major Metzger had been abducted," but added she was safe and thanked Kyrgyz officials for their efforts.

"We are elated to have Jill back with us," a military statement quoted the base commander, Col. Scott Reese, as saying.

Metzger was serving a four-month stint with the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing at Manas, where the U.S. military has maintained a base since 2001 to support operations in nearby Afghanistan. She had been scheduled to return Friday to her regular post at Moody Air Force Base, Ga.

Metzger's father-in-law, Kelly Mayo, said the major's husband, Air Force Capt. Joshua Mayo, was overjoyed when he was told Friday that his wife had been found.

"I can't even describe it. He's just beside himself, just unbelievable joy," Mayo said.

He told AP in Colorado Springs, Colo., that the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations had said Metzger was found on the side of the road with her head shaven. He also indicated she had been kidnapped and beaten.

"I know she's coherent, and whoever had her let her go," Mayo said. "We've got her back. Praise the Lord."

Here are some snippets from the New York Times,

The Air Force also expressed relief that she had been found, but noted that many questions remained.

“The first thing is that we’re excited that she’s alive and that we’re going to be able to send her back to her family and friends,” said Capt. Anna Carpenter, an air base spokeswoman. “The second thing is that we’re going to find out what happened to her.”

Since the major disappeared on Sept. 5, just days before she was scheduled to return to the United States, her case has confounded investigators. Her reappearance added new layers of mystery.

Major Metzger vanished in civilian clothes while on an off-duty shopping trip with co-workers at a department store in central Bishkek.

Kyrgyz police officials said the store’s security videotapes recorded her walking out of the store alone. They also said her cellular phone records showed she had called numbers outside Bishkek and that witnesses said she traveled by car to a bus station on the capital’s eastern side.

Bishkek is not generally considered dangerous, and northern Kyrgyzstan, where Manas Air Base is located and whose population is almost unfailingly friendly to outsiders, is far from the combat zones in Afghanistan that the air base supports.

But members of the military stationed at Manas are allowed to leave the base only with permission and in groups; once off-base they are expected to remain in pairs. The Kyrgyz description of her departure from her co-workers would appear to violate those rules and clash with her professional reputation.

There was no breakthrough until Friday night, when the major surfaced in Kant, a town east of the capital. The Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said in a statement that she appeared at about 11:45 p.m. at a residence there, and, speaking in broken Russian, told a family that she had been kidnapped.

The police picked her up, the statement said, and found her disheveled and with a scratch on her forehead and another on her neck, but without serious injury. She was then treated at the hospital, before being picked up by an Air Force team.

Police officials have said that no one has claimed to have kidnapped her, and there were no calls for ransom or political demands surrounding her disappearance. There were no immediate signs that she had been robbed, and no arrests in the case.

Speaking to reporters in Bishkek, Kyrgyz law enforcement officials presented a variety of contradictory accounts of her disappearance and re-emergence, further confusing the case.

Captain Carpenter declined to comment on the Kyrgyz statements, and said the Air Force was conducting an investigation of its own.

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????? Strange people kidnapped her, put her in a van, cut her hair, let her go safe and sound on the side of the road......