Two Britons arrested over cargo of Kalashnikovs

Two British men were among four people arrested in Kabul yesterday when police found 30 unregistered rifles in their car.

General Mohammad Ayoub Salangi, the city’s police chief, said the men were stopped at a routine checkpoint in the east of the Afghanistan capital and failed to provide licences for the cargo of AK-47 assault rifles.

Gen Salangi also said the serial numbers on the Kalashnikovs appeared to have been scratched off.

Two Afghan men who were in the car were also arrested, at around 10am local time.

The area where the men were arrested is home to a number of international security companies which routinely employ former members of the British armed forces

Although it was not clear if the men were in fact part of a security company, the British Embassy in the Afghan capital said they “were aware of reports that British nationals may have been detained”.

“Our consular officials in Kabul are in touch with the relevant Afghan police authorities to seek further information,” the spokesman said. Private security companies have faced increasing scrutiny from the Afghan government after president Hamid Karzai issued a decree last year demanding they be shut down.

In 2010, Bill Shaw, a former officer in the Royal Military Police who worked for a security firm that guarded the British embassy, was sentenced to two years in prison for bribery, after paying for two armoured cars to be released from a government pound.

Shaw was later acquitted and released.