Getting the picture without a camera at Afghan aid workers trial

Eight international aid workers are on trial in Afghanistan, accused of promoting Christianity in the Muslim nation. If convicted, the defendants could face the death penalty. CNN Correspondent Nic Robertson reports on covering the trial from Afghanistan's capital.

By Nic Robertson, CNN Correspondent

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- No cameras, no cameras. By now, that is a familiar mantra in Kabul, but this time they meant it.

There was no way the Kalashnikov-toting Taliban blocking the crowded corridor to the courtroom were going to let us by with anything that even looked like a camera, and some journalists did try. Isolated as they are, even Taliban soldiers know the difference these days between a tape recorder and a mini camera.

Getting the picture has been the biggest problem in covering the trial of the eight international aid workers accused of Christian proselytizing. A picture quickly snatched here, another secretly shot there, a nonchalant walk down a busy street with a tiny camera in your pocket could provide possibly the best footage you'll get all day.

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The supreme court was something different though. Paradoxically, we were being treated to an openness that was as unprecedented as the trial itself. With eight Christians tried by Islamic law, the Taliban wanted to make the trial as transparent as possible. Journalist visas normally hard to come by were being granted fast and furious by the Foreign Ministry. They wanted us and they wanted us there in the courtroom, but religious laws forbidding pictures of living things prevented filming.

Inside the packed room, the chief justice sat beaming across a dilapidated office table at the aid workers a few feet away. Along the walls, 22 gray-bearded religious and legal scholars coughed and wheezed, waiting their turn to help the judge. Behind the two rows of four seats filled by the defendants, John Mercer and Nancy Cassell whispered to their accused daughters. Around them, the only other seats filled by diplomats and another relative.

Behind them, notebooks at the ready, stood the journalists. No camera could have captured the stifling atmosphere in the tiny room. It would have been nice, however, to record the touching moments when John Mercer laid his hand on his daughter's shoulder in encouragement and when at the end of the trial they parted with a kiss.

To the Western eye, it would have looked a surreal scene -- sharpened swords hanging on the wall behind the judge, a large leather whip on a hook not far away. Not the stuff of court room TV, that's for sure. But we had behaved ourselves and, for us, the day seemed to be going well. It was not to last.

Outside again and reunited with our cameras, we were immediately competing with ever vigilant government-provided translators or minders as we prepared to videotape the departing aid workers. Even with a relatively small press corps, the melee to interview departing diplomats drew unwanted attention from the intelligence police.

Within minutes, our minders had been arrested and we were under armed guard being escorted back to the hotel. But we protested, "You want us here to cover the trial don't you?"

It was a question we would have plenty of time to think about as the hours ticked uselessly away walled up inside Kabul's Intercontinental Hotel. Slowly information filtered through. Our Foreign Ministry minders had been arrested by the intelligence police and a row was developing between the ministries of Foreign, Intelligence, and Prevention of Vice and Promotion. The more moderate Foreign Ministry was taking the heat for inviting the press in to Afghanistan and then not being able to keep them within Islamic law.

It's not the first time the foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, has had a hard time from the more fundamentalist elements with the Taliban hierarchy. Earlier this year, his was one of the only voices of reason in the Taliban inner circle urging caution when they chose to destroy ancient Buddha statues in central Afghanistan.

We have our minders back, albeit a little traumatized. Our fight with them for decent pictures, however, will pale in comparison next to the struggle between moderates and hard-liners inside the Taliban. It's not a battle that's likely to bring the Taliban down; they're here to stay at least for a while. It's interesting though that without the camera one can often convey the picture.