Taliban Will Put 8 Foreigners on Trial

The ruling Taliban said Monday that eight foreign aid workers held on charges of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity must stand trial.

The hard-line Taliban ruled out any pardon for the four German, two Australian and two American aid workers and said diplomats from their countries who were granted visas to enter Afghanistan will have no immediate access to the detainees.

Sixteen Afghans are being held on the same charges and will not be pardoned either, the Taliban said. They are staff members of Shelter Now International, which is part of a German-based Christian humanitarian aid group and was operated by the detained foreigners.

“The diplomats . . . can collect their visas today. However, they can only meet the authorities of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, not the detainees,” the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, told a news conference Monday in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.

U.N. special envoy Frances Vendrell said the ruling Taliban risked an international outcry over the case, and the foreign diplomats, due to fly from Islamabad to Kabul, the Afghan capital, today, said they would continue pushing to meet their nationals, who were detained with the Afghans more than a week ago.

Ruling out a pardon, the Taliban’s minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice, Mullah Mohammad Wali, said, “The appeal for acquittal was only possible if they were not aware of our stance and announcements, or if they had done what they did through a mistake.

“After the investigation is over, an Islamic Sharia court will decide as to what sort of treatment will be adopted against them,” he added.

The Taliban says it has seized a massive cache of Christian material from the aid group.