Taliban tunnels at least 480 out of Afghan prison

[Spiraling Leopard]

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4060412,00.html

Militants flee main prison in south Afghanistan after digging tunnel for months.

Taliban militants tunneled at least 480 inmates out of the main prison in southern Afghanistan overnight, whisking them through a 1,000-foot-long underground passage they had dug over months, officials and insurgents said Monday.

 

Officials at Sarposa prison in the city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, say they only discovered the breach at about 4 am, a half hour after the Taliban said they had gotten all the prisoners out.

 

The militants began digging the tunnel about five months ago from a house within shooting distance of the prison guard towers. It was not immediately clear whether they lived in the house while they dug. They meticulously plotted the tunnel's course around police checkpoints and major roads, the insurgent group said in a statement.

The diggers finally broke through to the prison cells around 11 pm Sunday night, and a handful of inmates who knew of the plan unlocked cells and ushered hundreds of inmates to freedom without a shot being fired.

 
'This is a blow'

A man who claimed he helped organize those inside the prison told The Associated Press in a phone call that he and his accomplices obtained copies of the keys for the cells ahead of time from "friends." He did not say who those friends were, but his comments suggested possible collusion by prison guards.

 

The Taliban statement said it took four and a half hours for all the prisoners to clear the tunnel, with the final inmates emerging into the house at 3:30 am. They then used a number of vehicles to shuttle the escaped convicts to secure locations.

 

Government officials corroborated parts of the Taliban account. They confirmed the tunnel was dug from the nearby house and the prisoners had somehow gotten out of their locked cells and disappeared into the warm Kandahar night.

 

The city's police mounted a massive search operation for the escaped convicts. They shot dead two inmates who tried to evade capture and re-arrested another 26, said Tooryalai Wesa, the provincial governor.

 

"This is a blow," presidential spokesman Waheed Omar said. "A prison break of this magnitude of course points to a vulnerability."

[Spiraling Leopard]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1380299/500-Taliban-prisoners-loose-insurgents-dig-1-000ft-tunnel-INTO-jail.html

The Great Escape (Afghanistan style): 500 Taliban prisoners on loose after insurgents dig 1,000ft tunnel INTO 'high security' jail

    * 1,000ft tunnel constructed over more than five months
    * Prisoners took more than four-and-a-half hours to escape
    * They had obtained copies of cell keys ahead of breakout
    * Fleet of cars met them when they emerged from tunnel

The Taliban dug a 1,000ft tunnel to enable 500 of its militants to escape from an Afghan prison yesterday.

Starting at a house outside the prison walls, the tunnel made its way right into the cell blocks at the high-security jail in Kandahar.

Once it was completed on Sunday night, the inmates who were in on the plan started ushering their fellow prisoners into the tunnel and out to freedom.

It was discovered at 4am yesterday – about half an hour after the Taliban said they had got all their men out, some of them senior commanders.

The tunnel, which took five months to build, was accessed through a hole cut into the concrete floor of one of the cells.

One escapee told the BBC  it had taken him about 30 minutes to crawl the length of the tunnel. Once outside, the inmates were ferried to safe houses in a fleet of trucks.

‘There were four or five of us who knew that our friends were digging a tunnel from the outside,’ said Mohammad Abdullah, who had been locked up for two years after being captured with a stockpile of weapons.

‘Some of our friends helped us by providing copies of the keys. When the time came at night, we managed to open the doors for friends who were in other rooms.’

Colonel Richard Kemp, who led British troops in Afghanistan, told BBC Radio 4 the break-out would put the lives of UK servicemen in jeopardy.

‘There is absolutely no excuse for these things to happen,’ he said. ‘We mustn’t forget that many American, British, Afghan and other Allied soldiers have lost their lives in getting men like these behind bars. We cannot have a repetition of this.

'If we are handing it back to a government who are incapable of handling it then everything we will have done will have been for nothing.’

The Sarposa prison in Kandahar – home city of the Taliban – was supposed to have become one of the most secure in the country after militants launched an attack three years ago and freed 900 prisoners.

The tunnel allowed the Taliban prisoners to bypass checkpoints, watchtowers and concrete barriers topped with razor wire.

‘This is a blow. It is something that should not have happened,’ said Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omer yesterday. ‘We are looking into finding out what exactly happened and what is being done to compensate for the disaster.

Kandahar has been the focus of the U.S.-led military campaign over the past year, with tens of thousands of American and Afghan troops launching offensives around the city.

Farid Ahmad Najibi, a spokesman for the justice ministry, said he could not rule out the possibility that guards had played a part in the escape.

‘It is either a case of the jailers being financially motivated and being bribed, or a case of them being politically motivated,’ said Waheed Mujhda, a Kabul-based analyst and expert on the Taliban.

Kandahar police shot and killed two who tried to evade capture and rearrested another 26.

The jail break comes months before the start of a transfer of security responsibilities from foreign to Afghan forces.

[Secularbeliever]

Was Steve McQueen there?

[syyuge]

As I told you, they are sons of rats.