Taleban crackdown on Christian relief

The agency gives food and shelter to victims of war

Afghanistan's ruling Taleban have closed down a Western aid agency, Shelter Now International, and arrested 24 of its staff, alleging that the group was spreading Christianity.

Eight foreigners - six of them women - were among those arrested.

Taleban officials said two of the foreign women workers were arrested while trying to convert an Afghan family to Christianity using computer material.

Last year, the Taleban introduced the death penalty for any Muslim converting to another religion and for anyone responsible for causing Muslims to convert.

Two of the women are Americans in their 20s.

Jorge Taubmann - Shelter Now's director and a German national - was also arrested, along with an Australian man.

The official Bakhtar news agency said Shelter Now International was "teaching Christianity to Afghans and we found Bible books in a house of its Afghan staff".

A senior Taleban official, quoted by the official Voice of Shariat radio, said the eight foreigners had "confessed to the crime" and asked for a pardon.

School closed

The Bakhtar news agency accused the women of "propagating Christianity" by showing a video stored on a computer to an Afghan family.

Officials of the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice police found the books and the video in a raid on the family's house.

Bakhtar also said a school run by the agency for 65 children had also been closed and the children had been shifted to a reform centre where they would receive an Islamic education.

Relief work

Shelter Now International is a non-governmental organisation supported by Germany, Britain, Holland and the United Nations World Food Programme, the agency said.

It was running projects to provide emergency shelter, as well as food and other necessities, to Afghans affected by drought and war.

It has also been offering emergency aid to Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

But the BBC's Afghanistan correspondent Kate Clark says that as an openly Christian agency, Shelter Now has always been vulnerable to charges of proselytising.