Boy, 14, describes how religious teachers gave him suicide mission

Fourteen-year-old Rafiqullah said the men at the Pakistani madrassa showed him and two classmates videos of suicide attackers. They taught the boys to drive a car and let them ride motorcycles. Then they gave Rafiqullah his mission: kill an Afghan governor.

The teenager crossed the border to the Afghan city of Khost, where a man named Abdul Aziz tried to pump up his courage, Rafiqullah said. Aziz gave him an explosives-laden vest, and the teenager confessed his fears. "I said I was afraid to carry out the suicide attack, and Abdul Aziz pointed a gun at me and said 'I'll kill you if you don't'," said Rafiqullah, who was taken into custody.

Declaring the boy an innocent pawn, President Hamid Karzai freed Rafiqullah yesterday. He appears to be at least the third child co-opted by Taliban fighters to carry out attacks since April.

Last month a six-year-old boy in Ghazni province said Taliban militants forced him to put on a suicide vest and walk up to American soldiers - a potential attack foiled when the boy asked Afghan soldiers for help. In April a Taliban video showed militants instructing a boy of about 12 in Pakistan as he beheaded an alleged traitor with a knife.

Rafiqullah said at least two other boys his age had been indoctrinated to carry out suicide attacks at his madrassa in Pakistan's border region.