from Tim Johnston in Kabul

ARMED religious police of the Islamic Taleban yesterday held Emma Bonino, the European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid, and 18 other people for more than three hours after pictures of women were taken in an Afghan hospital.

Signora Bonino said she had been frightened by the experience. "I was scared because they were fully armed and had Kalashnikovs pointed at us," she said after her release. The commissioner was arrested on a visit to a women's hospital.

Taleban accused journalists with her of taking photographs of women, an offence under the movement's regulations. She said that the experience had given her a taste of what Afghans went through every day. "This is an example of how people live here, in a situation of random terror."

Filippo di Robilant, spokesman for Signora Bonino, said that the journalists accompanying her were unaware of the restrictions on filming, and stopped as soon as they were asked. "[Bonino] went upstairs to talk to the director [of the clinic]. Meanwhile, the press had entered the wards. No one had told them not to. They had been filming for ten minutes and when they were told to stop they packed up," he said.

All 19 were released after the television crews accompanying Signora Bonino agreed to hand over video cassettes.

Haji Habibullah, a security official, said earlier that Signora Bonino and the others had been "arrested because they did not have any letters from the authorities and they were taking pictures of women.

"It is the policy of Taleban that no unrelated man may take pictures of women. They were brought in for this offence. The head of the hospital came to complain to us that they were taking pictures." Taleban banned all photographs of living beings, saying that they were un-Islamic, when it captured Kabul last September.

Signora Bonino's group was detained in the hot, dusty yard of a police station in central Kabul. Armed Taleban fighters guarding them laid out carpets in the shade of a tree, and one said that the detainees had been offered Western soft drinks to slake their thirst.

The release apparently came after the authorities consulted Mullah Muhammad Rabbani, acting head of the Taleban interim ruling council in Kabul. (Reuters)

Brussels: Jacques Santer, the President of the European Commission, said he deplored the detention of Signora Bonino, "especially as her mission was of a purely humanitarian nature". Signora Bonino had received apologies from the Afghan authorities. A commission statement said that over the past two years it had channelled £125 million of humanitarian aid into Afghanistan, becoming the world's most generous donor to the country. (Reuters)