Talibaan slaan weer door

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CNN.com

Taliban strict on Christian arrests

By staff and wires

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have not been swayed by international moves to seek the release of 24 aid agency workers who face the death penalty for promoting Christianity.

Authorities said on Tuesday they had strong evidence to back up the charge that detained Western aid agency workers were involved in converting Afghan Muslims to Christianity.

The United States, Australia and Germany all said they were concerned for four Germans, two Australians and two Americans, and were seeking access to them through diplomatic missions in neighboring Pakistan.

Mohammad Salim Haqqani, Taliban Deputy Minister for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, told Reuters: "We have our concerns too.

" . . . these people strongly insulted our religion and traditions. The concern shown by foreigners is not justified."

Religious police in Kabul on Sunday arrested eight foreign staff and 16 Afghan workers with Christian relief agency Shelter Now International.

Promoting Christianity is punishable by death under the strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law imposed by the Taliban.

Officials from the German Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, will travel to the Afghan capital, Kabul, the ministry said in a statement. It didn't elaborate.

The ministry said German officials in Islamabad met Tuesday with their Australian and U.S. counterparts to coordinate efforts to obtain the "immediate release" of the aid workers.

The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan also has said it will send a representative to Kabul, the Associated Press reported.

The diplomats were trying to make contact with the prisoners through the Red Cross and United Nations missions in Afghanistan, the ministry said.

Germany's Embassy in Pakistan maintains "close working contacts" with the Taliban on the provision of humanitarian aid, the ministry said. Germany closed its embassy in Kabul in 1989.

In meetings with Taliban officials in Islamabad, U.S. officials pressed for the release of the aid workers and told the Taliban it expects two American women among those arrested to be treated fairly.

"The message was the United States would not take lightly any harm that would come to an American citizen," a State Department source told CNN.

Haqqani said investigations were continuing and the fate of those arrested would be determined by the law and the orders of supreme Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

There has been no indication from Omar whether he will show flexibility and bow to international pressure. One Kabul-based aid worker said she was more concerned for the fate of the 16 Afghans than for the foreigners.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer on Tuesday rejected charges the Australians had spread Christianity.

"They may be Christian but they are not there to undermine Islam and spread Christianity. They are there to help with problems of poverty in Afghanistan," Downer told reporters in the Australian capital, Canberra, adding he would like Pakistan's help to resolve the issue.

Pakistan, one of only three countries to recognise the hardline regime as Afghanistan's government, appears to have some influence with the Taliban, although the movement ignored appeals from Islamabad and other countries not to destroy ancient Buddha statues this year.

Spokesmen at the U.S. and Australian missions in Islamabad told Reuters they still had no official confirmation of the arrests, but a German embassy spokesman said the German arrests were confirmed.

The U.S.-based SNI said although it did have a presence in Afghanistan, the detainees were working for a German-based group that used SNI's name without permission, a statement that confused the German embassy spokesman.

"The German NGO workers had valid working contracts with the Shelter Now organisation," he said. "So far I have not noticed any rift between the main organisation in Wisconsin and the field offices in Pakistan and Afghanistan."

The Taliban say they have also sent 59 children who were being taught by the arrested workers to a correctional facility, where they would remain until all traces of Christianity were removed.

The official Taliban news sources have said authorities had recovered bibles, and that the arrests were made while the foreign workers were showing an Afghan family material about Christianity on a computer.

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