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KABUL: Afghan government will set free 1,000 more Taliban prisoners following the Taliban’s announcement of releasing tens of prisoners from their captivity.
Afghanistan will soon free more than 1,000 Taliban prisoners, said spokesman for Afghanistan National Security Council, Javid Faisal. A Taliban delegation is in Kabul to preside over the prisoner release, he added.
Based on NSA figures, 2,710 militant prisoners have been set free by the Aghan government, based on President Ghani’s two decrees.
This is as the Taliban group has also set free more than 400 government inmates from their prisons.
The government’s release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners and the release of 1,000 government prisoners from Taliban prisons should have begun after the signing of a peace agreement between the United States and the Taliban to begin talks between Afghans. But the process hit the skids because of certain preconditions which were posed by the both sides about the swap. This is as no end seems in sight to the violence perpetrated by the Taliban.
The Taliban office in Qatar had earlier said it would pull its delegates out of Afghanistan from “counter-productive” dialogue on prisoner exchange – an agreement that was reached after a Taliban peace deal with the United States.
This comes amid assertions by top government officials that the Taliban were demanding masterminds of terrorist attacks be freed. Beig said the Taliban technical team were calling for the release of specific prisoners, trying to have their commanders.
