Kyrgyz police say major’s story in disappearance is confusing

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — A U.S. servicewoman who reappeared as mysteriously as she vanished gave confused accounts of her three-day absence and refused to make further statements after consulting with the U.S. Embassy, a Kyrgyz police official said Monday.

Air Force Maj. Jill Metzger, who had been stationed at the U.S. base in Manas, outside the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, disappeared Sept. 5 while on a shopping excursion in the city. She resurfaced Friday night when she knocked on the door of a house in Kant, about 15 miles outside Bishkek, and claimed she had been kidnapped.

Metzger was flown out of Kyrgyzstan within a few hours of her reappearance and was admitted Sunday to a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.

According to investigators, Metzger said an object with a note saying it was a bomb was placed in her pocket in a Bishkek department store and that she was kidnapped after following the note’s instructions on where to go.

“It seemed to me that her testimony was little believable; she was confused in her evidence,” Batmirza Dzhailobayev, head of the Kant police department, told The Associated Press.