'Stowaways may be Taliban deserters'

Taliban deserters may be reaching Britain as stowaways on Channel Tunnel trains, police claimed today.

They are warning that some stowaways caught at Folkestone have managed to escape and slip into the country undetected.

Although the Home Office says there is no evidence that asylum applications from Afghanistan have gone up since 11 September, police monitoring the influx of stowaways picked up at the Dollands Moor sidings say the number of Afghans has risen significantly since the action against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.

Inspector David Brady, of the British Transport Police, said that since the beginning of October more than 90 per cent of the 280 stowaways picked up on the Kent side of the Tunnel claim to be from Afghanistan. He said: "Some have managed to escape from Dollands Moor because the fences here are designed to keep people out, not in.

"There is a strong suggestion that many of those coming through are deserters from the Afghan war. Some of those we have picked up have said they're either from the Taliban or the Afghan army."

This view is not shared by the Home Office - which also denies there is any intelligence to support reports that al Qaeda or the Taliban had infiltrated the Sangatte Red Cross centre in northern France.

However, officials from the Ministry of Defence have taken the unusual step of working alongside police at key ports. They have been interviewing stowaways seeking intelligence about conditions on the ground in Afghanistan.