Journalist apparently still in custody as attacks begin

ISLAMABAD/KABUL - British journalist Yvonne Ridley was apparently still in a Kabul jail this morning when the US-British attack on Afghanistan began hours before she was to have been handed over to British authorities.

Ridley was being held with eight foreign aid workers detained in the Afghan capital since August on charges of spreading Christianity. She had been seen by a Pakistani lawyer representing the detainees, a spokeswoman for her newspaper the London Sunday Express said.

US President George W. Bush had demanded that the Taleban release the aid workers, as well as hand over Osama bin Laden and his aides, to avoid a US attack.

Ridley was arrested in eastern Afghanistan last week for entering the country illegally but was to be freed on Monday.

Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taleban ambassador in Islamabad, told reporters hours before the attack on Afghanistan that Ridley was still in custody but "she will be handed over to the British High Commissioner tomorrow", in a reference to Britain's ambassador to Pakistan.

Abdul Hanan Himat, head of the Taleban's Bakhtar news agency, earlier quoted Taleban Information Minister Qudratullah Jamal as saying in Kabul that she had already been freed.

A Pakistani official in the northwestern city of Peshawar had told Reuters the handover would take place at the Torkham border crossing point near the Khyber Pass.

Zaeef said he had invited a British diplomat to his house to discuss procedures for Ridley's release on Monday. The Taleban's reclusive supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had issued an order to free Ridley, officials said on Saturday.

Ridley, 43, was picked up with two Afghan guides near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on September 28 while dressed in an all-enveloping burqa, which has only a mesh for the eyes.

The hardline Taleban, threatened with US military strikes for refusing to hand over fugitive militant Osama bin Laden, had been investigating whether Ridley was really a journalist or a spy.

The decision to release her came a day after British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a brief stop in Islamabad for talks on the Afghan crisis and the global war on terrorism with military ruler General Pervez Musharraf.

"We, after our contacts through diplomatic channels, decided to release her," Jamal was quoted as saying by Qatar's al-Jazeera television channel.

The fate of Ridley's guides was not immediately known, but they could face severe punishment.

- REUTERS

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