At least 18 employees of the Swiss NGO International Assistance Mission (IAM), including an American woman, have been arrested in Afghanistan by Taliban authorities and accused of being Christian missionaries, the organization said on Saturday.
IAM explains this in a statement published on its website “The employees were kidnapped from their office in Ghor,” in central Afghanistan, and “taken to Kabul,” the country’s capital.
“The kidnapped are one foreigner and seventeen Afghans”explains the Swiss NGO.
Two Afghan nationals and a member of the international team were arrested at the organization’s facilities on September 3, followed by another 15 Afghan nationals arrested at the same facilities on Wednesday, the IAM said in the released statement.
Contacted by the France Presse agency on Saturday, the spokesman for the governor of Ghor province, Abdul Wahid Hamas Ghori, said that 21 people had been arrested, including one of North American nationality.
‘Security forces and secret services [afegãos] they had been observing the group for some time. Documents and audio recordings have been obtained that prove this [eles] invited people to join Christianity”, he added.
The NGO, for its part, explains in the statement that “it currently has no information regarding the nature of the allegations” against its staff, but that if allegations were made against the organization or any of its employees “it would investigate them independently all evidence submitted.”
This NGO has been present in Afghanistan since 1966, when it specialized in eye care, before diversifying into other areas of healthcare and education.
Source: DN
