Soviets hold doctor

Press, 1 February 1983, Page 9

Soviets hold doctor

NZPA Islamabad. Pakistan A French doctor captured last week by Soviet soldiers in a village south of Kabul had been identified as Philippe Augoyard. who was working for a French humanitarian medical aid organisation. an Afghan resistance spokesman said in Pakistan. Citing a source present in the village of Saijawan in the Logar province when the raid occurred, the spokesman said that the Frenchman — described by observers as the first foreign doctor to be captured in Afghanistan during the last three years — had been seized with several

Mujahidine rebels who were immediately shot. He said that the doctor, from Aide Medicale Internationale. had been led away by Soviet soldiers and taken to Kabul. Radio Kabul at the weekend reported the capture of a French citizen in the Logar province in the company of "counter-revolutionary elements" who had entered the country secretly from Pakistan. The radio said that his "confessions" would be broadcast soon. The Saijawan spokesman said that Soviet airborne troops had surrounded the village on Sunday or Monday. Informed sources said that two other French doc-

tors were continuing to work * in the region treating civilians injured during an _ Afghan offensive which had begun on January 16. A French journalist and - photographer, arrested in southern Afghanistan in 1980. were released after confessing in a radio and television broadcast to having collaborated in "counter-revolution-ary propaganda." Western observers in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and in Peshawar, near the Afghan border fear that the Afghan authorities could decide to sentence the doctor to a long prison term in a bid to dissuade other organisations from sending missions to Afghanistan.