Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, holding 24 aid workers on charges of promoting Christianity, said yesterday it had seized hauls of Christian material and had previously warned the group to stop religious activities.
It also added that the penalty for foreigners found promoting other religions in Afghanistan was expulsion, not execution.
Twenty-four staff of the German-based relief agency Shelter Now International - including four Germans, two Americans and two Australians - were arrested on August 5th in Kabul on charges punishable by death under the hardline Islamic Taliban regime. "This NGO (non-governmental organisation) was warned beforehand ... and requested to refrain from such activities," said Mr Sohail Shaheen, the Taliban's deputy ambassador to neighbouring Pakistan.
Mr Mohammad Salim Haqqani, the Taliban's deputy minister for the prevention of vice and promotion of virtue, said in Kabul that thousands of Christian video and audio tapes, as well as bibles, all in the local Pushto and Dari languages, had been found.
The Shelter Now director, Mr Esteban Witzemann, said from his office in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar the allegations of proselytising Afghan Muslims were not true.
"There might be some (material) for private use ... but what they are accused of, that they are distributing hundreds of bibles and Christian literature and they are trying to persuade people to leave Islam and becomes Christians, all this is nonsense and not true," he said.
He added he still had no contact with those arrested but that other Shelter Now staff - including 16 other foreign nationals in Kabul and an unknown number of foreign and local staff in Herat - had fled Afghanistan, with most going to Pakistan.
Diplomats from Australia, Germany and the United States were hoping to get approval to travel to Afghanistan tomorrow to visit the detained.
"All three nations have agreed that we'll try and travel up together to get access to the detainees," said a spokesman for the Australian High Commission in Pakistan.
"We would (like to) leave tomorrow on the U.N. flight but I don't know if we'll get the visa in time," he added. None of the aid workers have been sighted since their arrest three days ago and a diplomat at the German embassy in Islamabad said it was too early to say whether those arrested had been involved in spreading Christianity.