May 05, 2007	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 17, 1428

LANDI KOTAL (Khyber Agency), May 4: Authorities on Friday arrested a Chinese woman along with her Afghan companion at the Torkham border for trying to enter the country without proper documentation.

Official sources said that three women, a Chinese woman Xyi Yan, Afghan Habiba and her daughter, were travelling with a man when they were intercepted at the border. The women were arrested but their male companion managed to cross over to Afghanistan and escaped. During her detention at Landi Kotal, the Chinese woman told officials that she was employed in an office run by Habiba’s son in Kabul. But she could not provide any details about the nature of her job.

The woman’s passport showed that she had travelled to Dubai and Afghanistan on a number of occasions, an official said. She was sent to the Khyber House in Peshawar while the Afghan woman and her daughter were kept at Landi Kotal prison.

The Landi Kotal political administration had arrested four Chinese women at Torkham in March this year when they were trying to cross over to Afghanistan without proper travel documents.

The four women were handed over to the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad after preliminary investigation. Their male accomplice had also managed to escape to Afghanistan.