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Foreign Aid Workers Treated Well by Taliban, Afghan Prisoners Beaten
Saturday, November 17, 2001
(1:30 AM GMT)
IslamOnline & News Agencies

"Women were being beaten until they bled," American aid worker Heather Mercer said. "Women were being arrested because they ran away from their husbands who beat them."

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
Two American aid workers freed this week from imprisonment in Afghanistan told reporters Friday that although their Taliban captors had treated them very well, they also witnessed much ill treatment against the Afghan prisoners.

"That was probably the hardest thing about our whole time in jail. We saw some pretty atrocious things happening to the prisoners," said Heather Mercer, 24, in her first public comments since being airlifted from Afghanistan by a U.S. helicopter on Wednesday.

Mercer and 30-year-old Dayna Curry said in a press conference here that the Taliban treated them with great respect.

"They said we were a guest in their country and they wanted to treat us that way as much as they could," said Mercer, quoted in a Washington Post article. "There were days that were a very difficult time, but I would say, all in all, the Taliban really tried to look after us."
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Dan