KABUL, 25 July 2004 — The US-led coalition force in Afghanistan warned yesterday there could be more people acting as self-appointed anti- terror agents in Afghanistan.

Speaking almost three weeks after Afghan police arrested three US nationals who ran a private jail without authorization, US military spokesman Jon Siepman said in Kabul: “It is entirely possible there are others acting independently.”

Siepman told reporters the arrest of the three US nationals had made the Afghan government and coalition forces very aware of possible others who might attempt to act similarly.

Afghan police on July 5 raided a jail run by three US citizens and four Afghans after the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force found the men were running it illegally. The three went on trial in Kabul on Wednesday, charged with torture, kidnapping and running a private jail.

ISAF spokesman Chris Henderson said the three US nationals had tricked the ISAF force but had been helped by the US-led military coalition in some operations.

The leader of the accused US nationals had said earlier this week they had been a running an anti-terrorism operation in full cooperation with the US government.

“We were receiving calls from the Pentagon five times a day and they were aware of what we were doing,” Idema said at the start of the court hearing Wednesday. He also said they had repeatedly turned over prisoners to the US forces in Afghanistan.

On Thursday, the US Army admitted having had contact with the vigilante group on at least one occasion, when the group handed over an Afghan national suspected of terrorist activities who was subsequently held by in military custody for a month.

However, just a day before the raid the US military in Afghanistan had moved to cut any perceived ties with Idema, releasing a statement saying that they neither employed the suspected bounty hunter nor supported his activities.

The allegations of the link between US forces and the vigilante group come at a time when the US government is facing criticism for apparent mistreatment and torture of Iraqi detainees.

Some of the Afghans held by the self-styled vigilante group also claimed they were tortured in the jail, and three of them have applied to the courts to be compensated for torture, according to Judge Abdul Baset Bakhtyari, who is presiding over the group’s trial.

In total, 11 Afghans held illegally by the group were released by Afghan police after the prison was raided. One of those detained illegally was an Afghan judge working at the Supreme Court, while the others were ordinary Afghans, said Bakhtyari.

Meanwhile, four Afghan soldiers have been killed in an ambush by suspected Taleban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan, officials said yesterday.

The ambush occurred Thursday night in Latee-Kandaw area of Dangam valley in Kunar province, some 220 kilometers east of the capital Kabul.

“Four Afghan soldiers were killed in the attack,” provincial governor Sayeed Fazel Akbar Agha told AFP.

Authorities have detained 11 suspects, including some Pakistani tribesmen, a provincial Information Ministry official said. “The soldiers were on a search operation when they came under attack,” provincial TV and radio director Zahidullah Zahid told AFP.

Dangam valley lies 10 kilometers from the Pakistani border and Zahid claimed Taleban insurgents and their Pakistani supporters frequently cross into Afghanistan from Pakistani tribal areas to launch attacks on Afghan military posts.

A man who identified himself as a Taleban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, claimed responsibility. “We ambushed and attacked the government soldiers in Dangam valley of Kunar and killed at least four soldiers,” Hakimi told AFP from an undisclosed location.

The security situation has been deteriorating in Afghanistan ahead of presidential elections scheduled for Oct. 9 and parliamentary polls due next April which Taleban insurgents have vowed to disrupt.

There have been regular attacks on electoral workers, aid workers, non-governmental organizations, construction companies and Afghan and US-led coalition forces recently.

On Wednesday, Taleban insurgents also fired rockets at a government building in Kunar but there were no casualties.

NATO peacekeepers discovered a cache of rockets yesterday close to the airport in the Afghan capital, a spokesman said. Forty rockets, 30 fuses and some wiring were found in a concealed store two kilometers from the main runway at Kabul International Airport, said Cmdr. Chris Henderson, a NATO spokesman.

French explosives experts from the international force removed the rockets. It was unclear if they were destroyed or handed over to the Afghan military.

It was unclear who had hidden the weapons, but Henderson said their discovery was a setback to those who “wish to jeopardize Afghanistan and set back the political process in the country.”

Rockets are fired frequently into Afghan cities and at the bases of NATO and US

Several have come down near Kabul airport, the country’s busiest, which also serves as a base and hub for the 6,500 peacekeepers.

Troops and civilians have also been targeted in a string of bombings, including one in the southern city of Kandahar on Friday that wounded an American soldier.