Kabul - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban has announced that 24 foreign and local staff from an international aid agency were safe after being arrested for propagating Christianity - but it has given no word on whether they will face trial.
The hardline Islamic movement arrested eight international and 16 local staff working for Shelter Now International in the Afghan capital Kabul, accusing them of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity - a crime punishable by death.
"All of the Shelter Now local and foreign personnel are safe - no harm has reached them," said Mohammad Salim Haqqani, the Taliban's deputy religious minister.
"The leadership of the Emirate will decide about their fate," he said, without elaborating. "The Afghan staff are kept in a separate cell from the international ones," he added.
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The official Taliban news agency Bakhtar said on Sunday that the authorities had found Bibles in a house of the agency's Afghan staff.
Of the eight foreigners arrested, two were men, described by newspapers in neighbouring Pakistan as a German and an Australian. Details about the six foreign women and 16 Afghan staff were not immediately available.
UN officials say Shelter Now International is an international non-government organisation supported by various Western countries and engaged in humanitarian work.
Taliban radio broadcasts said on Sunday that the agency's foreign staffers were arrested while trying to convert members of an Afghan Muslim family by showing them material about Christianity through a computer.
The Taliban, a purist Islamic movement, issued an edict last year prescribing the death penalty for any Muslim converting to any other religion or those involved in such conversions. - Reuters
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