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The eight foreign Christians, six of them women, were identified as citizens of Germany, the United States and Australia. All were serving on the staff of the German-based Shelter Now International (SNI) organization. Another 16 Afghan staff employed by SNI in its relief work in Kabul were also arrested and apparently jailed separately from the foreigners.

On August 13, the Associated Press reported that although long awaited visas were approved for Australian, German and American diplomats, the Afghan Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil has said diplomats will not be allowed access to the imprisoned aid workers. They will instead only meet with officials in Kabul.

Reportedly three of the detained women were sighted August 8, outside their homes in the capital. According to an Associated Press report filed August 9 from Kabul, the three women shrouded in black chadors were under escort by armed Taliban guards and were later seen carrying away suitcases from their homes.

Taliban officials identified by name all eight foreigners, which included SNI's German director Georg Taubmann. But at least one of the Americans was misidentified, since one woman named had left the country before the arrests occurred and is currently in the United States.

The Taliban's so-called religious police arrested two young women on August 3, reportedly "caught red-handed" after showing a film about Christianity to an Afghan family, the Taliban said. Two days later, Taliban guards raided the SNI office in Kabul's Wazir Akbar Khan locality, arresting the six foreign staff present as well as 16 local staff.

According to Pakistan's English daily The News, another 60 or more Afghan children and youth who allegedly were "taught Christianity" by the SNI staff were also detained and sent to Darul Tadeeb, a detention center for minors, to be "re-educated in accordance with the teachings of Islam." Sixty-five young boys were released on August 11, reported Reuters, and their fathers were arrested instead for failing to supervise their children.

On August 6, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Salim Haqqani, deputy minister of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, claimed that the arrested aid workers had "confessed to their crime," and that large amounts of Christian literature and audio cassettes in the Dari and Pashto languages had been confiscated. Musical instruments, which are banned by the Islamist regime, were also seized in the raid, he said.

Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister Abdul Rehman Zahid has repeated claims that the regime had "received solid evidence" that SNI was "engaged in propagating Christianity in Afghanistan."

However, SNI spokesman Estefano Witzemann told Reuters that the Taliban claims to have seized "thousands" of copies of videos, audio cassettes and Bibles in the local Pashto and Dari languages were untrue. A fellow SNI colleague called the Taliban figures exaggerated and "highly doubtful."

"We are just not that stupid," the source declared, noting that as an openly Christian NGO, SNI has been actively ministering in the sensitive region of northwest Pakistan since 1983. Although the group was accused and attacked by extremist elements for alleged evangelism activities in Peshawar in the spring of 1990, Pakistan government authorities later refuted the charges.

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August (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45