For Heather Mercer, the scene of U.S. helicopters swooping into a field in Afghanistan to whisk her and seven others to freedom seemed like something out of a movie.

Mercer said she and her seven fellow aid workers from Shelter Now International watched in fear from their jail cells in Kabul as Taliban forces fled the city under attack by Northern Alliance forces.

Mercer said she thought Taliban authorities had abandoned them as silence fell over the city. But the moment of calm was broken by the sounds of soldiers at the prison door.

But instead of executing the prisoners, Taliban fighters scooped up the group and rejoined the retreat toward Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold city south of Kabul.

But the Taliban commander in charge of the prisoners had a change of heart, Mercer said, and decided to leave the group behind near the Afghan city of Ghazni, where three U.S. Special Forces helicopters picked them up in the early hours of Thursday.

The Taliban arrested eight workers of Shelter Now International in August for promoting Christianity in Afghanistan. The charge carried the death sentence, but the Taliban had at the time said the Westerners -? four Germans, two Americans and two Australians -? would be given a reduced sentence.
During their raid on the Shelter Now compound in Kabul on Aug. 4, the Taliban also arrested 16 of the organization?s Afghan helpers and then held them separately. Their fate is unknown.
At the time of their arrests, the Taliban showed the media what it called evidence of the aid workers? guilt. It said computer disks containing the story of the life of Christ in the local Dari language, a copy of the Bible in English and Dari, and a book on Christianity had been seized at a house where the workers were accused of promoting Christianity.
Asked if the charges were true, aid worker Peter Bunch said, ?We?re not stupid.?

The freed prisoners are Americans Mercer and Dana Curry; Australians Bunch and Thomas; and Germans Magrit Strebnar, Kati Jelinek, Silke Duerrkopf and Georg Taubmann, who is the head of Shelter Now.
Copyright 2001 by United Press International.
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