Canada reporter says swapped for Afghan prisoners

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian journalist kidnapped near Kabul last month said on Wednesday that she had been released in exchange for relatives of her chief abductor, who the Afghan authorities had put in jail after she was seized.

Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter Mellissa Fung was freed on Saturday after 28 days in captivity. She said most of the kidnappers had been very young men and were clearly members of a criminal gang rather than the Taliban.

"I now understand that Afghan intelligence had sort of fingered the family of the ringleader of this gang and had arrested a whole bunch of them and it was a prisoner exchange," Fung told the CBC in an interview.

"They agreed to release the family if the group would release me and that's what ended up happening," she said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday that no "political prisoners" had been exchanged for Fung, a choice of words that could exclude the possibility of family members being used in a swap.

Harper also said no ransom had been paid by the government, the CBC or anyone else to free the 35-year-old reporter.

No one from the offices of Harper or Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon were immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; editing by Rob Wilson)