SHE was kept in a hole in the ground for four weeks.

Sometimes, she was chained or blindfolded.

A tired-looking Canadian journalist described in a video released on Sunday how she endured her ordeal after she was kidnapped in Afghan capital Kabul.

Wearing a head scarf and muddied traditional Punjabi outfit, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reporter Mellissa Fung said she had not been hurt during her ordeal, which started when she was kidnapped on12 Oct.

She was freed after tribal elders and provincial council members negotiated her release, reported AP.

Chained & blindfolded

She was handed over to intelligence officials on Saturday near the town of Maydan Shah, about 50km from Kabul.

Days earlier a Dutch female journalist was freed after a week in captivity, but a French aid worker snatched in the city centre on Monday is still missing.

"They kept me blindfolded... not all the time," Miss Fung was seen telling intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh in the offices of the National Directorate of Security (NDS) hours after her release.

She said the kidnappers had dug a hole in the ground and then a side tunnel less than 2m long in which she had been kept for four weeks, one of them in chains.

"They dug a small hole and there was a tunnel and a cave... The cave was very, very small," she said.

"For the first three weeks they had somebody with me the whole time, watching me, so they did not chain me. The last week they left me and chained me," she said.

"They never hurt me," she said, adding she had not been beaten.

The reporter said she was given biscuits and juice once a day, but had no water to drink. She was able to wash with water from a well.

Miss Fung was on her second tour as a correspondent for CBC in Afghanistan.

She had been in Kabul for nearly a month researching a story about the refugee situation in and around Kabul.

In the video, Miss Fung is seen talking to Canadian embassy officials who thanked the men involved in her release, reported AFP.

NDS spokesman Sayed Ansari told a press conference earlier that three men had been arrested for the kidnapping, carried out as she visited a refugee camp in Kabul.

But Mr Ansari said they were only mid-level players. The kingpins were being sought, although one had fled the country, he added.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said no ransom had been paid.

"It's the government's policy not to pay ransoms and all policies were fully respected," he told a press conference in Ottawa.

Mr Harper said "security issues surrounding this case" kept him from providing details of Miss Fung's release.

Western media in Afghanistan had refrained from reporting on the abduction at the request of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which said it had been acting on the advice of the company's security experts.

They also did not report on the kidnapping of Dutch journalist Joanie de Rijke, freed on Friday, after requests from her associates who said that it may endanger her life.

"I would like to thank members of the press, who - understanding the grave risks to Miss Fung's life - have deferred publishing this story," Mr Harper said.

Ms De Rijke's kidnapping has been blamed on Taliban insurgents but Miss Fung is believed to have been snatched by one of the criminal gangs behind a wave of abductions, with wealthy Afghans or their relatives the main targets.

This article was first published in The New Paper on Nov 13, 2008.