KABUL - Those 592 Taliban prisoners who are behind war crimes shouldn’t be released before the start of intra-Afghan peace talks, and a thorough investigation must be conducted into, read a statement by the AIHRC.
The Afghan government earlier urged the Taliban to reconsider demanding the release of nearly 600 insurgents convicted of “serious crimes”.
“There are 592 convicted Taliban on the Doha Taliban’s list of 5K that have serious crimes, such as drug trafficking, abducting citizens, sexual assault, stoning of women, assassinations, and other haq-ul-abd (crimes against individuals) cases,” according to Javid Faisal, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
The Taliban has claimed that under the February’s peace pact, it has released roughly 800 prisoners of the Afghan government so far whereas the Afghan government announced nearly 500 of the inmates were from the Afghan forces–the rest were all civilians.
The Afghan government, as per reports, has so far released nearly 4,400 of the insurgent group’s captives.
Under a peace accord struck between the United States and the Taliban, the relevant sides are committed to put efforts to release prisoners as a confidence-building measure.
The United States and the Taliban signed a peace pact in February 29 under which the Afghan government was required to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners and for the insurgents to release 1,000 pro-government captives in return. (TKG)