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Escape of Taliban Prisoners

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) for raising the subject of this serious incident. It might help the House if I give some of the background to it. At 4 o'clock in the morning on 25 April, 476 prisoners escaped from the national security unit in Sarposa Prison, Kandahar. This prison is under the control of the central prisons directorate of the Afghan Ministry of Justice. A number of prisoners have been recaptured by Afghan security forces, and they continue to search for escaped prisoners. The Afghan Ministry of Justice will conduct a joint investigation into the escape with the national directorate of security. The head of the CPD, General Jamshid, is travelling to Kandahar and General Tahir, of the detention and investigation section of the NDS, is already there. In the meantime, all prisons in Afghanistan have been put on alert and have reviewed their security accordingly. The UK has had no involvement with infrastructure builds, training, mentoring or any other support to Sarposa prison. We continue to support the development of the Afghan prison sector by assisting the Afghan Ministry of Justice's central prisons directorate in developing prison infrastructure, policies and working practices; supporting and structurally maintaining the high security unit within Policharkhi prison in Kabul; providing training and mentoring to improve prison officer standards; and funding the construction of a prison in Lashkar Gah. In answer to the hon. Gentleman's specific question, this is a serious event that vividly underlines the importance of building a secure prisons sector in Afghanistan. We urge the Afghan Government to put every effort into recapturing those who have escaped in order to minimise the danger and damage to anyone—be they UK forces and personnel or anyone else—and to apply lessons learned from the planned investigation to ensure that this does not happen again.