The State Department is investigating the possibility that former Boston University graduate student Clark Bowers was kidnapped and is being held for $25,000 ransom by an Afghan warlord, according to State Department spokesman Len Scensny.
“We’re trying to figure out what’s going on,” Scensny said yesterday. “We’ve gone to the Afghan Foreign Ministry and asked them to check into the situation.”
Scensny said contacting the foreign ministry is a standard procedure, though he said the information the State Department has is very limited.
“Unfortunately, [Bowers] was not very specific with where he is,” Scensny said. “We’re trying to get as much information as possible and we’ll go from there.”
Bowers’ wife said in The New York Times he was in Afghanistan on a humanitarian mission.
Scensny said the State Department was informed of Bowers’ situation when Bowers’ wife contacted the department several days ago. Bowers called his wife from Afghanistan last Wednesday to tell her he and his interpreter had been kidnapped by an Afghan warlord, according to The New York Times. She contacted Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (D-Calif.), who gave Amanda Bowers the State Department phone number, according to a statement released by Rohrabacher’s office.
Bowers worked on a Ph.D at BU from January 1993 until December 1998 in the University Professors program, according to BU Spokesman Bob Zalisk. He had not completed his dissertation when he left in 1998 and didn’t complete his Ph.D, Zalisk said.
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