April 12 (The Killid Group) — The Afghan government released a third group of hundred Taliban prisoners on Sunday despite the insurgent group pulled out its negotiators out of the talks over prisoner release.
According to the press release by the National Security Council (NSC), at President Ghani’s decree, the Afghan government made a decision to release another 100 Taliban prisoners “based on their health condition, age and length of remaining sentence as part of our efforts for peace and containment of COVID-19.”
Previously, 200 Taliban prisoners were released at president’s decree in a bid to pave the way for the intra-Afghan peace talks as well as the containment of COVID-19 pandemic.
The two relevant technical sides for prisoner swap were negotiating in Kabul to finalize the process that was originally supposed to have taken place by March 10 and pave the path for intra-Afghan peace talks between Kabul and the Taliban.
But the Taliban insurgents pulled their technical team out of talks blaming the Afghan government for the delay and needlessly wasting time.
Afghan officials, however, have blamed insurgents for insisting upon release of 15 notorious Taliban commanders convicted for large scale attacks, and were believed to be a serious security threat.
But Suhail Saheen, Taliban’s spokesman, issued a denial saying that under the U.S.-Taliban pact signed on 29th of February, those 15 prisoners were also among 5,000 jailed Taliban to be freed in exchange for 1,000 Afghan prisoners.
Under the accord, the United States and the Taliban are committed to work expeditiously to release combat and political prisoners as a confidence-building measure, with the coordination and approval of all relevant sides.
The agreement calls for the release of up to 5,000 jailed Taliban prisoners who were set to be released in exchange for up to 1,000 Afghan government captives by March 10, but the process was delayed due to several reasons.
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