Seven Taliban rebels escape from Afghanistan's main prison

By: AMIR SHAH - Associated Press | Tuesday, January 24, 2006 7:27 PM PST ∞

An Afghan police officer stands guard outside Policharki Prison on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, on Tuesday. Seven mid-ranking Taliban rebels disguised themselves as visitors to escape from the high-security prison that is being refurbished ahead of the arrival of terror suspects from U.S. military custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Tuesday.
Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Seven Taliban rebels disguised themselves as visitors to escape a high-security prison in Kabul that is being refurbished for the arrival of terror suspects from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Tuesday.

The breakout from the crumbling Policharki Prison on the outskirts of the capital comes six months after four al-Qaida members, including one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants in Southeast Asia, broke out of a jail at Bagram, the U.S. military's headquarters north of Kabul.

The seven men convinced their guards to let them walk out of the overcrowded prison Sunday by marking their hands with a fake ink stamp similar to one used to identify visitors to the jail, said Deputy Minister for Justice Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai.

The prisoners do not wear uniforms and the stamp is the main method used to differentiate between detainees and visitors, he said.

"There were so many visitors at the jail on the Sunday that the prisoners exploited the guards' confusion and sneaked out," he said.

Police launched a manhunt for the seven, who all had been caught in the past year fighting for the Taliban in the volatile southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, said Gen. Abdul Salam Bakshi, the director of the country's prisons.

They were convicted in separate trials in recent months and sentenced to prison terms of between 16 and 17 years, he said. He declined to reveal their identities.

Ten prison guards who are suspected of helping the men escape or of failing in their duties have been arrested, Bakshi said.

Some wings of Policharki are being refurbished to improve security and living conditions before some 110 Afghans being held at Guantanamo Bay are sent back here later this year, Bakshi said.

The U.S. and Afghan governments said in August that Afghans held at Guantanamo and elsewhere would be sent back to Afghanistan.

American and allied Afghan forces captured thousands of suspected Taliban and al-Qaida members in Afghanistan after a U.S.-led invasion toppled the repressive Taliban government in late 2001.

Hundreds of detainees were classified as "enemy combatants" and transferred to Guantanamo, while others were detained at Policharki, or at the maximum-security detention facility at Bagram.

Policharki is notorious in Afghanistan. It was the scene of summary executions under a series of former regimes, most recently the hard-line Taliban.

Human rights workers have criticized conditions at the prison, saying they violate "every standard of human rights."