Taliban provides 'evidence' against aid workers

The Taliban displayed a haul of Christian material yesterday, including a Bible and a crucifix, as evidence against one of two foreign aid groups it has expelled from the country.

The Taliban Foreign Minister also repeated a suggestion that eight Western aid workers on trial in Kabul for proselytising may face the death penalty. Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil said the possibility of lenient treatment was not an option.

He said a decree providing 10 days' jail and expulsion for foreigners accused of proselytising would not apply to the four Germans, two Americans and two Australians who work for Shelter Now International. "SNI have worked here for a long time and their tentacles are everywhere. In fact, they are not only accused but it is proven they were [proselytising]," he told a press conference.

The material displayed yesterday was, the Taliban claimed, recovered from an organisation called International Assistance Mission, whose staff were ordered out of the country last week.

Accusing the eight SNI workers of luring people to Christianity through giving money and offering visas to foreign countries, Mr Muttawakil said: "There is a difference; they were not just accused, there was also the evidence. Certainly there will be a different sentence."

The trial of the SNI workers began behind closed doors on Tuesday. Some commentators have claimed that the foreigners can only be jailed and expelled but the Foreign Minister's statement seemed intended to rebut that belief.

The inference that the aid workers may now be facing death row rocked SNI. "We are shocked over the news and can barely believe it," said a spokesman for the organisation in Germany.

Western diplomats trying to secure the release of the aid workers were able to meet a senior Taliban representative for the first time in nine days and were told they could attend the trial. They are now scouring Kabul for a suitably qualified lawyer.

A consular official was able to take food to the prisoners and letters from home and collect letters from the prisoners. After these breakthroughs, the German Foreign Ministry was confident that progress was now being made. "We know that they are in good health and they are being treated well, as of today," the German Foreign Ministry spokesman said. "And that applies to all the prisoners, not just the Germans."

The Taliban agreed to further meetings with the three Western diplomats.

Because those on trial are from countries that do not officially recognise the Taliban, their diplomats based in Pakistan have been negotiating with the authorities in Kabul in recent weeks. Alistair Adams, the Australian representative, said the three countries' envoys had met an official of the Afghan Foreign Ministry. The Afghan official said his government would grant consular access to the eight defendants, among them six women, and they would be entitled to a lawyer.

The consul-general of the American embassy in Pakistan, David Donahue, said: "It is very clear now that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to keep us informed." The Western team, which also includes the German diplomat Helmut Landes, was equally upbeat after its last encounter with the Taliban more than a week ago. The Westerners had then spoken of a "positive beginning" and described their opposite numbers from the Taliban as "very co-operative".

The Taliban Foreign Minister denied suggestions from Islamist sources outside Afghanistan that it was considering a prisoner swap with America as one way to resolve the case. Mr Muttawakil said he had no knowledge of a swap deal, proposed by relatives of the Egyptian militant Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently serving a life term in America for terrorism.

If the Taliban did execute some or all of the aid workers, it would take the regime's estrangement from the rest of the world to extremes unthought of when it demolished the giant Buddha statues at Bamiyan earlier this year.

* The Taliban said yesterday it was considering banning foreign airlines from over-flying Afghan territory because United Nations sanctions meant it lacked the funds to maintain aviation control systems.