Afghanistan Times
Related Articles
AT News
KABUL: The National Security Council has announced that 50 other Taliban prisoners were released, pushing the numbers to over 4,000.
Intizar Khadim, an official at the council said the newly released inmates were among the 600 prisoners, whom the government didn’t intend to free due to their high level criminal background such as murder and robbery.
The government stance is clear, he said. “Those who are qualified for release, they will be freed but others would remain in jail until a legislative way is found.”
The prisoner swap process between the government and Taliban has faced many hurdles since the process started after signing a preliminary peace deal between the US and Taliban on February 29th in the Gulf state of Arab, Doha.
Based on the deal the government is bound to release 5,000 Taliban inmates in return for the 1,000 Afghan security forces. According to Afghan officials, over 4,000 Taliban prisoners have been freed by the government as of now. The Taliban also released around 700 prisoners but the government said that 175 of them were civilians.
