Aid workers treated well in harsh land

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Even as Heather Mercer's Taliban guards treated her like a sister, allowed her to sing and pray and occasionally sent meals prepared by the commander's cook, she often listened as Afghan women prisoners were beaten until they bled.

"That was one of the hardest things about the whole time, seeing the discrepancies between the way we were treated and the way the Afghans themselves were treated," said Mercer, 24, a native of Vienna, Va., and one of eight foreign aid workers who escaped Afghanistan in a U.S. air commando rescue three days ago.

"We saw some pretty atrocious things happening to the prisoners," Mercer said Friday, providing the first public accounts of the two American women's escape and rescue after more than three months in Taliban prisons on charges of spreading Christianity.

"Women were being beaten until they bled," said Mercer, "women who were arrested because they ran away from their husbands who beat them. ... Prisoners in Afghanistan aren't treated very well."

The eight foreigners -- two Americans, four Germans and two Australians -- were evacuated from their prison by Taliban forces on Tuesday when Kabul fell to the opposition Northern Alliance. They were then locked in a jail in a city about 60 miles southwest of Kabul, released by local soldiers when the Taliban fled and helicoptered out of Afghanistan by U.S. special operations personnel.

The other woman, Dayna Curry, 30, of Thompson's Station, Tenn., said the imprisoned aid workers kept up morale and passed the time by "killing flies," playing endless games of cards, reading the Bible, exercising and hand-washing their clothes. Twice the Taliban permitted them to use a satellite phone to call their families. Their Pakistani attorney brought them letters from home -- and long underwear, courtesy of NBC television.

"It certainly was a roller coaster, both emotionally and physically," said Mercer, who like Curry is a graduate of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, where both are affiliated with a church.

"There were days of despair, not knowing we would ever get out," Mercer said. "We sat through it in a vacuum of information. ... All I could do is cry out to God to come and help me."

Although they were jailed by the world's harshest Islamic regime, the prison guards "looked after us as though we were their sisters," said Mercer.

"They said we were a guest in their country and they wanted to treat us that way as much as they could," said Mercer, who like the other aid workers was employed by the German-based organization, Shelter Now International when they were arrested Aug. 3. "There were days that were a very difficult time, but I would say, all in all, the Taliban really tried to look after us."

Both women admitted that they were guilty of at least some of the charges brought against them by an Islamic government that considered evangelism a severe crime.

"After we saw the list of our charges, we were completely flabbergasted," said Mercer, "because 80 percent of the charges they had against us were completely false."

The other 20 percent, Curry conceded, were valid.

"We had been in an Afghan home," Curry said, adding she made a copy of a Farsi and English book about Jesus and "gave it to them."

Although the women described their meetings with the family as part of "natural discussions" about religions, they broke two serious laws imposed under the Taliban: bans on spreading information about Christianity and on foreigners visiting the homes of Afghans.

While the foreign aid workers most likely would have been evicted from the country if found guilty, the 16 Afghan aid workers arrested with them faced death if convicted.

The detained Afghans were freed by Northern Alliance troops Tuesday.

-- Information from the Washington Post and Knight-Ridder newspapers was used in this report.

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