US Air Force Tight-Lipped on Captain’s Disappearance in Kyrgyzstan

More questions than answers continue to surround the case of Jill Metzger, a US Air Force captain who was presumed kidnapped on September 5 in Kyrgyzstan before turning up three days later.

Metzger, who was reportedly in the final days of a deployment at the US air base at Manas outside the Kyrgyz capital, vanished after last being seen at Bishkek's Central Department Store in the late afternoon on September 5. Three days later, she reappeared in Kant, a Bishkek suburb that also happens to be the home of a Russian military facility. While missing, Metzger's long blonde hair had been cut short and dyed black, according to local reports.

A US Air Force statement issued September 10 said Metzger was "undergoing follow-up medical evaluations and debriefings" at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Metzger, according to witnesses, seemed dazed when she reappeared, but showed no visible signs of physical abuse. The Air Force statement indicated that she was in good condition and was expected to return to the United States in a few days.

Beyond this, what happened to Metzger remains a mystery. An Air Force spokesman, reached September 11 at the Pentagon, declined to elaborate on the official statement. Meanwhile, local news accounts, citing police investigators, say that Metzger claimed that she had been kidnapped, but in the moments immediately after she resurfaced, she reportedly provided Kyrgyz police with contradictory information about her experience.

Hours before she resurfaced, Kyrgyzstan's Interior Minister Murat Sutalinov vigorously disputed the abduction theory surrounding Metzger's disappearance. Several Kyrgyz media outlets said surveillance video at the department store showed Metzger leaving alone.

The 24.kg news agency, citing a police source, reported that a woman matching Metzger's description approached "the operator of a telephone outlet" near the intersection of Jibek Jolu Prospect and Osmonkul Street and, speaking in Russian, requested to make a cell phone call. The operator declined the request, even when the individual offered "a Euro banknote as payment." The report goes on to say that a private taxi driver admitted giving a "foreign woman" a lift on September 5 around the time of Metzger's disappearance.

Police have been unable to reconstruct what happened after this point until her reappearance. Metzger's removal to Germany effectively has brought the Kyrgyz investigation to a halt. Kyrgyz authorities had expressed interest in interviewing Metzger again in an attempt to clarify the discrepancies in her initial testimony, but such questioning now appears unlikely to occur. If the Air Force has uncovered additional details during its debriefing of Metzger, it is not making the information public.

The 24.kg report of a foreign woman speaking in Russian contradicts an account provided by the couple in Kant who first encountered Metzger on September 8. The Bely Parakhod newspaper quoted a woman, identified as Svetlana Ishchenko, as saying that when Metzger mysteriously appeared at her front door, the American seemed to be in a state of shock and could not speak a word of Russian.