Pakistani asylum detainees to free: Thailand

BANGKOK: Thailand on Saturday confirmed it would release a group of almost a hundred Pakistani refugees and asylum seekers that activists said includes several dozen children and a baby born in detention.

In total 96 people, most of them were arrested in December, will be released from a Bangkok detention centre on Monday, an immigration officer said.

He said one baby was born inside the facility and described conditions as "unhygienic and very crowded".

"Children were separated from their mothers or fathers and that kind of condition, psychologically, is very bad," he said, explaining that families were split up because men and women are held apart.The organisation has paid a five million baht ($165,000) bail bond

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011