Kidnapped American freed in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – An American U.N. worker abducted more than two months ago turned up unharmed Saturday, lying alongside a road in western Pakistan with his hands and feet bound and pleading “Help me, help me,” the man who found him said.

John Solecki was discovered Saturday evening abandoned in a village some 30 miles south of Quetta near the Afghan border after his captors called a local news agency to tell them where to look, officials said.

Police and U.N. officials declined to discuss what led to Solecki’s release. U.N. officials who met with him Saturday reported that he was “tired but all right,” U.N. spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said.

Solecki, who headed the U.N. refugee agency’s operations in Quetta, would be reunited with his family “as soon as possible,” Pagonis said, declining to say when he would leave Pakistan or whether he planned to return.

Solecki’s release was a rare piece of good news amid intensifying violence here that has raised international alarm over the nuclear-armed country’s stability. On Saturday, a suicide bomber attacked a paramilitary base in the capital, killing eight.

Solecki’s abduction and the killing of his driver on Feb. 2 in Quetta raised concern that he was another victim in a spate of attacks on foreigners blamed on Islamist militants operating from strongholds along the Afghan frontier.