Kabul jail riot over as inmates surrender
A four-day riot that left six inmates dead and exposed security failings at Afghanistan's main prison ended today after 1,300 prisoners who had run amok in their cell block surrendered to authorities.
The rioters were shifted from a wrecked wing of Policharki jail in Kabul that was left empty and scarred by fire and bullets. The last to surrender was a hardcore group of about 100 al-Qaida and Taliban, now confined to separate, higher-security quarters.
"God help us, now everything is safe and secure," Mohammed Qasim Hashimzai, the deputy justice minister, told reporters. Army and police still surrounded the prison.
He said one more dead body had been found as the prisoners were cleared out, bringing the death toll to six -- all inmates. At least 40 others have been injured.
Hashimzai said an American inmate, Edward Caraballo, who had earlier phoned media and said other prisoners had threatened to cut his head off, was safe. But Hashimzai also criticised Caraballo for speaking to media and said authorities had now confiscated unauthorised mobile phones and laptop computers that some inmates had inside the prison.
The unrest at Policharki, which was built on the outskirts of the Afghan capital in the 1970s and is notorious for harsh and crowded conditions, has shaken what little confidence remained in its ability to keep its 2,000 prisoners under control.
Inmates reportedly went on a rampage after refusing new prison uniforms that were being introduced after some Taliban inmates escaped last month by disguising themselves as visitors.
Another uprising by some al-Qaida inmates in December 2004 left eight people dead, four of them guards.
Gen. Mahboob Ullah Amiri, commander of a rapid reaction force at the prison, accused a former Taliban military commander for northern Afghanistan, Mullah Mujahed, of leading the riot that began on Saturday and left inmates in control of much of the facility.
"It was a conspiracy by al-Qaida and Taliban," Amiri said. "Now we put them in separate rooms so they can't cause any more violence."
Hashimzai said that on Tuesday, about 1,000 prisoners had made clear they wanted to surrender, and were shifted by bus today to another block of the prison under official control.
The government had agreed to prisoner demands for a library and better food and sanitation, he said, but had rejected calls for retrials from inmates who claimed they had been unfairly convicted.
Hashimzai said that left only a hard core of al-Qaida and Taliban who wanted to stick it out, but they too eventually relented.
Amiri said about 100 of these most "dangerous" inmates had been confined to high-security cells.
Reporters were allowed into the prison, but couldn't talk to inmates. The wrecked, three-storey prison's Block Two where the riot started was dark and empty, its walls riddled from bullets. Women inmates could be seen looking out of small cell windows from a separate, nearby block. Amiri said none was hurt.
