KABUL - The insurgent Taleban movement in Afghanistan said Saturday it was holding two Pakistani journalists because they were not carrying travel documents, after a report said the pair had been kidnapped.The journalists would be delivered to the border, possibly tomorrow, said Mohammad Hanif, a purported spokesman for the movement driven from government in late 2001 and now trying to regain power. ‘We’ve taken them because they were not carrying any travel documents. But we’ll leave them near Pakistan border tomorrow or sometime,’ Hanif told AFP.
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He said he had been put on trial by a Taleban ‘court’ in the volatile southern province but did not know why. ‘According to the message received on the telephone by his family this morning, he (Shahzad) said that he has been put on trial by the Taleban after his arrest on November 21,’ the Karachi-based newspaper said. ‘He has been arrested by Taleban and put on trial for unknown reasons and unknown charges.’
Shahzad, who has reported widely on the activities of the Taleban on both sides of the border, was in Afghanistan to cover the rebel movement, said The Star, PakistanÂ’s most widely-read evening newspaper