Jailed Aid Workers’ Cause Nearly Forgotten

Amid the grieving for thousands of American victims of terrorism and the clamor for revenge, the fate of two U.S. aid workers imprisoned in Afghanistan has been all but forgotten.

Dayna Curry, 24, and Heather Mercer, 29, are two of eight Western aid workers on trial in the Afghan capital, Kabul, for trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. Under the ruling Taliban’s harsh version of Islam, that is a crime that can mean the death penalty.

Now, their Pakistani lawyer fears a U.S. military strike at Afghanistan could destroy any hope of persuading the Muslim clerics who will pass judgment on the eight to show compassion and set them free. Even before the current crisis, Taliban officials had issued conflicting statements about what penalties the aid workers might face, including death.

Before Tuesday’s attacks in the U.S., the Taliban’s Supreme Court told the aid workers that they could be represented by a lawyer of their choice, and U.S. diplomats recommended Atif Ali Khan, a specialist both in Islamic law, known as Sharia, and human rights law.

Khan is still trying to persuade the Taliban embassy here in Pakistan’s capital to issue him a visa so that he can defend his clients. After failing to find any Western diplomats willing to help him, he is afraid the aid workers have been abandoned.

“Especially after the [U.S. and other] diplomats left Kabul, I feel these people have been left alone,” he said in an interview. “The situation is really tense now.”

Khan added that he is afraid his American, Australian and German clients, who work for Germany-based Shelter Now International, “are being sacrificed.”

The diplomats of the aid workers’ countries “shouldn’t expect me to go there all by myself and do everything,” the frustrated lawyer said. “Dealing with the Taliban like this, I think I will need diplomatic help there.”

A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Mark Wentworth, confirmed that consular officer David Donahue had met with Khan and speculated that the lawyer’s lack of American citizenship may have short-circuited embassy efforts to assist him.

Wentworth declined any further comment, citing privacy concerns.

Meanwhile, in Germany, the Foreign Ministry announced that it will no longer be able to provide direct consular or legal assistance to the four Germans detained in Kabul along with the Americans and two Australians. It said a Pakistani attorney in the Afghan capital will look after the welfare of the three women and one man and report to German diplomats in Islamabad. The statement said the situation was necessitated by a Taliban order for all foreigners to leave the country.

But diplomatic support from the aid workers’ governments is crucial in persuading the Taliban to spare their lives, said Khan, who studied human rights law at American University in Washington.

“It’s a case where I think we can save them,” he said. “Compassion is part of the [Islamic] religion, and there is no definite punishment for such a charge. The discretion in this case belongs to the [chief] judge, and I think there are a lot of grounds for compassion.

“You can expect anything at this point,” Khan said.

The lawyer has turned to 1,400-year-old legal texts as ancient as the Koran in his search for precedents on the proper punishment for infidels seeking to divert Muslims from the path laid down by the prophet Muhammad.

The final verdict in the aid workers’ trial is expected to come from the Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. But he has reportedly left Kabul, from which, according to the United Nations, tens of thousands of Afghans already are fleeing into the countryside in anticipation of U.S. airstrikes.

Mercer’s father, John Mercer of Vienna, Va., and Curry’s mother, Nancy Cassell, a teacher from Thompsons Station, Tenn., were in Kabul to attend the trial, but they moved to Pakistan on Thursday in an evacuation of aid workers and diplomats.

They won’t speak to reporters for fear of upsetting the Taliban and making matters worse, but they have good reason to fear for their children’s lives. In 1998, when the U.S. fired a barrage of cruise missiles at suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, those thirsty for revenge went looking for the few Westerners still in Kabul.

An Italian aid worker was killed, and another aid worker injured, when the occupants of two four-wheel-drive vehicles sped past their car, blocked it and then opened fire with assault rifles.

The Christian aid workers now on trial were helping to feed Afghans, about 3 million of whom depend on relief food in a country sinking deeper into ruin after more than 22 years of war.

The Taliban say Curry and Mercer were caught red-handed in the home of an Afghan family last month showing a video on the life of Jesus.

The regime says its Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, whose religious police enforce the many edicts that demand strict adherence to Muslim law, have gathered indisputable proof of the aid workers’ guilt.

The evidence put on display for journalists included Bibles in Afghan languages.

Sixteen members of the aid workers’ Afghan staff are also accused of spreading Christianity.

Before Tuesday’s attacks in the U.S., most experts expected that the Westerners would be found guilty, sentenced to a brief jail term and then expelled. The Afghans seemed more likely to face the death penalty if they were found guilty of converting to or preaching Christianity.

Khan met with Mercer’s father and Curry’s mother for about half an hour at the U.S. Embassy on Friday, and he said they appeared to be holding up well. But the optimism they expressed after meeting with Taliban authorities in Kabul is fading, he said.

“I felt a sense of hopelessness in the parents as well as the diplomats,” Khan said. “They feel sad. They have left their children over there, and they really don’t know what to do.”

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Times staff writer Carol J. Williams in Berlin contributed to this report.