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| Taliban Suspects Escape an Afghan Prison |
| By New York Times |
| Published: 10/20/2003 |
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Up to 40 Taliban suspects and other prisoners escaped from a prison in the southern city of Kandahar, Afghan officials said last week. The prisoners, among them the brother of one of the country's most wanted men, had dug a well-constructed 30-yard-long tunnel from their cell and made a clean getaway at midnight Friday, said the deputy provincial governor, Muhammad Anas. Two important Taliban members were among those who escaped, he said. They were Mullah Abdul Hadi, the brother of the former Taliban defense minister, Maulavi Obeidullah, and Aziz Agha, who was believed to have been behind a recent campaign of burning schools and laying mines in Kandahar, he said. Not all of the prisoners who escaped were Taliban suspects. Some were members of another anti-government party, Hesb-e-Islami, and some were common criminals, another official said. The escape will be a huge blow to the government and the newly appointed governor of Kandahar, Yusuf Pashtun, as well as to the American forces based just outside the city. The Taliban have carried out increasingly daring attacks in the region in recent months, severely testing the ability of the local security forces to maintain control. Recently, the authorities and their American allies have received intelligence that the Taliban are preparing "larger" and "more spectacular attacks," the American special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, has said. Many of the men who escaped were fighters captured in a recent American-led military campaign in the mountains of neighboring Zabul Province. American forces took some of those captured into custody, but most of the prisoners were taken by the Afghan police to Kandahar. |
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