Seven Taliban rebels escape from Afghan prison

Seven mid-ranking Taliban rebels have escaped from Afghanistan’s main high-security prison, officials said today.

The men broke out of Policharki Prison, on the outskirts of the capital Kabul, on Sunday, said General Abdul Salam Bakshi, the director of the country’s prisons.

“We’ve launched a manhunt for these Taliban members, but there’s no sign of them so far,” he said. “They were all caught fighting for the Taliban.”

Bakshi said the men were from the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, a former Taliban stronghold. They had been sentenced to between 16 and 17 years in prison, but he had no other details about their convictions or identities.

They escaped while relatives were visiting them at the prison, the general said. Ten prison guards who are suspected of helping the men escape have been arrested, Bakshi said.

The breakout comes as authorities are refurbishing part of the prison to improve security ahead of the return of Afghan terror suspects being held in US military custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The US and the Afghan government announced last August that Afghans held at Guantanamo and elsewhere would be sent back to Afghanistan, but didn’t say when.

American and allied Afghan forces captured thousands of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members in Afghanistan after a US-led invasion toppled the repressive Taliban government in late 2001.

Hundreds of detainees were classified as “enemy combatants” and transferred to Guantanamo, while others were detained at Policharki, or at a large detention facility at Bagram, the US military’s headquarters north of Kabul.

The escape is the second in six months. In July, four al Qaida members, including one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants in Southeast Asia, broke out of Bagram, sparking a massive, but unsuccessful, manhunt.