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Behind Bars with the Taliban
Thursday, November 8, 2001
(2:00 AM)
By Kevin Donovan / Toronto Star

“I let him go because he promised to stop working for the Taliban. Then our forces capture him again and bring him here,” warden Imom Kul chuckles.”



Prisoners of War



KHOJA BAHAUDDIN, Afghanistan
When the Taliban soldiers came to Tur's house in Kandahar last year, they asked for money. A tax, they said, for the privilege of living in the home of Taliban central command and Osama bin Laden.

"My mother and father had no money," explained the 6-foot-2 inch Afghan man, who was recently captured in a skirmish with the Northern Alliance. "So I was the tax."

He was given a gun and a frontline post. Now Tur is in jail, wearing a battered pair of black sneakers and a long Afghan robe. He is convinced that bin Laden, prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, will not be captured.

"If they look for 20 years they will not find him. He is too good a hider," said Tur.

Yesterday, Tur and 33 other Taliban prisoners spoke to The Star in a series of jailhouse interviews. They are held in a grim prison with four-metre-high clay walls, guards on the roof, an exercise yard and small cells with iron bars set in tiny windows.
(More: TheStar.com News Source)
2001 © Toronto Star Newspapers Limited.

Dan