Taliban release French journalist

A French journalist arrested last month in Afghanistan has been released and handed over to French diplomats along the Pakistani border.

Michel Peyrard appeared relaxed and was smiling when he crossed the border after sundown.

He says while captured he was not tortured.

"They were treating me fairly and they gave me food," he said.

"They questioned me about my profession. This morning they told me, 'You are going home'."

Peyrard's two Pakistani companions - Mohammad Arfan and Mukrram Khan - were also expected to be released but at the last minute were ordered back to the Afghan city of Jalalabad, the French reporter says.

A Taliban official who accompanied Peyrard to the border says the two Pakistanis will be released tomorrow.

Peyrard, who works for Paris Match magazine, was arrested on October 9 in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan dressed in attire for Afghan women, the head-to-toe burqa, after having slipped into the country to report on the US air strikes which had begun two days earlier.

Taliban authorities had threatened to try him as a spy.

The Taliban judiciary follows a unique legal system based on Islamic Sharia law. The Afghan system does not include such institutionalised forms as arraignment, indictment and other procedures traditional under Western law.