Key Taliban prisoners escape
Forty-one Taliban prisoners tunnelled out of jail in southern Afghanistan on Friday night in an escape that is embarrassing for the government and presents yet another security headache in the troubled region. The city's security chief General Salem...
Forty-one Taliban prisoners tunnelled out of jail in southern Afghanistan on Friday night in an escape that is embarrassing for the government and presents yet another security headache in the troubled region. The city's security chief General Salem told Reuters that all the prisoners were from one barracks of the jail.
"They included some important Taliban, one was the brother of Mawlavi Obaidullah," he said. Obaidullah was Taliban defence minister and has evaded capture since the hardline Islamists were overthrown by US-led forces two years ago.
Taliban spokesman Haji Abdul Latif told Reuters there were a total of 41 escapees.
Kandahar governor Yusuf Pashtun said five or six of the escapees were "important" Taliban figures. He said the prisoners, who had been kept in chains, must have had the assistance of prison guards as they had tunnelled out an estimated 15 truckloads of earth.
News of the escape comes days after Karzai and the US special envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad denied reports that former Taliban Foreign Minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil had been freed from US custody for facilitating talks with Taliban officials in Kandahar.
The United States is leading a 11,500-strong foreign force in Afghanistan force pursuing remnants of the Taliban and the allied al Qaeda network, which is blamed for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.