Topic: Taliban Prisoners On Hunger Strike

Washington Times
May 12, 2008
Pg. 15

KABUL — About 300 Taliban suspects have been on a hunger strike in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar prison for a week demanding fair trials, rights groups and local lawmakers said yesterday.
The prisoners, most of them captured in connection with a Taliban-led insurgency, stopped eating a week ago yesterday in protest at the handling of their trials by local authorities, one lawmaker said.
"About 300 prisoners have been on a hunger strike [for] the past one week. About 20 of them have sewn their lips," said Ahmad Wali Karzai, head of the Kandahar provincial council.
It was not independently confirmed they had sewn their lips.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar confirmed the hunger strike and called on authorities to deal with the issue.