Mass jail break-out 'thwarted'

2008-10-11 14:15

Kabul - Afghan security officials said on Saturday they had thwarted a mass break-out by Taliban prisoners who had bribed three Afghan policemen to smuggle bomb-making equipment into a Kabul jail.

The three officers had provided Taliban inmates with four boxes of explosives, a pistol, ten cellphone batteries and 30 phone chargers hidden inside drinking flasks and packs of dates, they said.

"Taking advantage of their uniforms and positions of responsibility, the officers carried the material into the prison to the Taliban prisoners," the National Directorate for Security (NDS) said in a statement.

One Taliban militant, Ghazni Mohammad, worked as the contact point between the Taliban group and the policemen, it added.

The plan was to launch a series of suicide explosions to destroy the prison's walls and gates, followed by a mass escape.

In a similar plot in June, Taliban suicide bombers blew open Kandahar city's main prison, killing fifteen prison guards and allowing 1 100 prisoners, including hundreds of Taliban rebels, to escape.

Two inmates involved in the thwarted Kabul break-out were professional tailors tasked with making suicide vests inside the prison, the NDS said.

"Based on very accurate information, the NDS arrested those involved and they all have confessed under initial interrogation to their roles in the plot," it said.

Pul-e-Charkhi prison, on the outskirts of Kabul, holds more than 3 000 inmates including 400 or 500 Taliban suspects.

It also has a separate section, guarded by the Afghan army, where 120 Taliban prisoners are kept, including some returned from the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

The Kandahar provincial police chief and his two senior aides were sacked over the break-out in June, which was the biggest in the history of Afghanistan.

- AFP