Parents Visit Americans Jailed in Afghanistan

Two American women jailed in Afghanistan on charges of promoting Christianity met with their parents Monday in a “very close and warm reunion” three weeks after they were arrested, a U.S. diplomat said.

Dana Curry met with her mother and Heather Mercer with her father for two hours behind 10-foot walls that hid a sprawling compound guarded by rifle-toting soldiers of the Taliban, the hard-line rulers of this war-ravaged country.

“It was a very close and a warm reunion, as you can imagine it would be,” David Donahue, the consul general at the U.S. Embassy in neighboring Pakistan, said after the meeting, which followed weeks of efforts to gain access to the foreigners.

Donahue and two other Western diplomats accompanied John Mercer and Curry’s mother, who would not give her name, to a reform school where the Americans and six other foreign aid workers have been held since their arrests.

“I think all of them looked well,” Donahue said. “Everyone met together. We discussed things like, ‘How are you? How have you been treated? What conditions are you living under? Did you receive the packages we sent you?’ and they said they had.”

Dana Curry and Heather Mercer are single and in their 20s; their hometowns have not been released. They were arrested along with four Germans, two Australians and 16 Afghan employees of Shelter Now International, a German-based Christian aid group.

“We caught them red-handed,” Taliban Information Minister Qadratullah Jamal said Monday. “We caught them with compact discs that told about Christians and told of becoming Christians. They had Bibles and books in our languages.”

Under Taliban law, the penalty for a foreigner convicted of propagating a religion other than Islam in this mostly Muslim nation is three to 10 days in jail followed by expulsion. The penalty for an Afghan who converts to Christianity is death.

Donahue said he and the other diplomats hope to meet with Taliban officials today.