KABUL, 19 December 2004 — The Afghan government yesterday ordered an inquiry into an apparent jailbreak attempt by suspected Al-Qaeda prisoners which left five guards and four inmates dead.
Police and troops on Friday evening stormed Kabul’s notorious Pul-e-Charki prison in a hail of bullets to end a daylong siege, retaking control from inmates who had murdered a guard and grabbed guns.
“We will launch an extensive investigation after we finish the funeral ceremony of our martyrs today,” prison chief Abdul Salam Bakhshi said, adding that the bodies of guards had been returned to their families.
Bakhshi said the five inmates who had started the riot by killing a prison guard with a razor blade and grabbing his gun were all Al-Qaeda followers.
“They were all Al-Qaeda. They are terrorists,” he added.
Bakhshi said police were holding an injured member of the group who had incited the prison riot and would begin interrogating him today.
“After the investigation we will know what were the prisoners attempting to do — if they were trying to escape or if they were trying to create violence in the prison to kill the American prisoners or the Afghans,” he said.
“At this moment I cannot say anything about their attempts,” he added.
The prison houses militants as well as common criminals and American vigilantes Jonathan “Jack” Idema, Brent Bennett and Edward Caraballo — who were convicted in September of running a private jail and torturing Afghan suspects.
Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said four of the inmates who were killed were foreigners arrested on terror charges but did not say when they were taken into custody.
He said three Pakistanis and one Iraqi prisoner were killed and one Pakistani inmate was injured.
“Five prison guards were martyred and three police and one soldier were injured as well,” he added.
Police sources said the Iraqi had been jailed for plotting to assassinate Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim.
The attempted jailbreak raises questions over how secure Afghanistan’s largest but dilapidated prison is as a facility for holding dangerous militants, and whether the three US prisoners could have been targeted by militants within the prison.
Two of the armed Pakistani prisoners were only killed after 50 soldiers and police stormed the prison, with the security forces sustaining more casualties than the poorly armed inmates.
NATO-led peacekeeping troops were on standby but did not help quell the riot, Lieutenant Commander Ken MacKillop told reporters. He praised Afghan forces for their handling of the situation.
US military spokesman Mark McCann said the jailbreak was an Afghan matter and the investigation would remain in the hands of the government.
The prison is divided into a number of blocks but only two are in use. One contains prisoners of war and remnants of the Islamist Taleban regime ousted in 2001 while the other houses criminals, mainly drug offenders.
It was not clear in which block the violence erupted.
