Afghanistan: Trial of foreign workers resumes

The Pakistani defence lawyer for eight foreign aid workers accused of preaching Christianity in Afghanistan visited the detainees and reported they were ready for the resumption of their trial, scheduled later today.

Atif Ali Khan and his deputy met the detained workers - two Americans, two Australians and four Germans - and said each signed a document accepting him as their lawyer.

Khan said he would meet the head of Afghanistan’s supreme court later today.

US President George W. Bush has demanded that Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers free the aid workers detained since August for allegedly trying to convert Afghans to Christianity a serious offence in the rigorously Muslim country.

The trial’s resumption comes a day after a Pakistani delegation to Afghanistan tried and failed to persuade the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden, the lead suspect in the September 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Afghanistan is a likely target of a US-led military strike because it shelters bin Laden.

A senior Bush administration official confirmed on Friday that US special forces were already conducting scouting missions in Afghanistan a possible prelude to military action.

John Mercer and Deborah Oddy, the divorced parents of detained American aid worker Heather Mercer, last week and described their anguish at having to leave their 24-year-old daughter behind while a potential war looms.

‘‘If you look at the world situation and what looms for this region, it’s hard to be patient,’’ Mercer said. ‘‘The feeling of helplessness is difficult.’’

The latest reports are that the other detainees were being treated humanely.

But Mercer, of Vienna, Virginia, and Oddy, of Lewiston, New York, said that only applied to their daughter’s physical state. ‘‘I can tell you that she is terrified,’’ Oddy said then.

Khan said he delivered some asthma medicine for Heather Mercer on Saturday. She, American Dayna Curry, 29, and the six other detainees work for the Christian relief agency Shelter Now.

They insist they were in Afghanistan to help the poor, not convert them.

The penalty, if convicted of proselytising, could be anything from expulsion to a jail term to death.

Khan had been reluctant to enter Afghanistan because of the threat of war, but he travelled there anyway on Friday.