A COMMUNITY leader today called for Burnley Taliban fighter Anwar Khan to be released in a gesture of co-operation between the British government and his captors.

Shahid Malik, the son of Burnley's deputy mayor and a member of labour's National Executive, is calling for a direct intervention from Downing Street to secure the release of Anwar, who has been held prisoner by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan for over two years.

He is believed to have been caught whilst fighting the Northern Alliance but has not committed any offences against the west.

Mr Malik said today: "I firmly believe that a direct intervention from the Government would secure his release.

"We routinely see drug runners convicted in the Far East being released after an intervention by the Government."

Mr Malik revealed last week that Anwar's family had received a letter from the Foreign Office quoting the third Geneva Convention on Human Rights as the reason they were not intervening in his release.

He said the letter said that under the convention, Anwar is a prisoner under civil war and not international law and they are powerless to intervene.

Mr Malik said: "The letter said that it expected the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan to abide by the Geneva Convention.

"This is the same regime that we saw on the television this week shooting and dancing round the bodies of Taliban fighters in Kabul.

"This is the same regime that killed 50,000 people in Kabul in the mid-1990s and has been known to kill prisoners of war.

"It is nonsense for the Government to believe that the Northern Alliance will abide by the Geneva Convention.

Mr Malik stressed the fact that nobody knows the full facts of how Anwar came to be captured in Afghanistan. What is clear is that Anwar was sent to Pakistan by his family to 'kick' a heroin habit and enrol in a school in Lahore. Anwar, whose parents live in Colne Road and whose brother Azmal lives in Colne Road, never arrived at the school and crossed the border into Afghanistan after only a week at his uncle Pakistan.

The new relationship forged between the west and the Northern Alliance is, according to Mr Malik a "window of opportunity"

"It is an opportunity for them to show that they are more compassionate than we have witnessed in the past.

"There is no excuse for the Government not to be doing more than they are currently."

It is not the first time that the Government has been accused of double standards over Anwar's case. His brother Ajmal, who still lives in Burnley, said that after the release of the British journalist Yvonne Ridley, the Foreign Office should have capitalised and pressed for Anwar's release.

Burnley MP Peter Pike said: "This is a far from straightforward case. I have raised the matter with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and received a reply from one of his junior ministers. I have passed this on to the family.

"If they are unhappy and wish to come back to me I will look into the points that they raise and take the matter up with Mr Straw and the Foreign Office again."

Blackburn MP Mr Straw said: "If more representations are made to me by Peter Pike I will deal with them in the usual way. This is a very difficult case.

"We have got to be hard headed about these things. People who go to work with or fight for the Taliban make life very difficult for themselves."