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Twenty six Taliban suspects freed in Afghan peace bid
[Dawn] Up to 26 Taliban suspects have been freed from jails in Afghanistan as part of efforts to persuade insurgents to make peace, Afghan and US officials said Monday.The prisoners included men detained by the US military at Bagram Air Base, two in police custody in Kabul and six from a small prison in the eastern province Khost, the officials told AFP. "They were detained for suspected links to armed opposition groups," said Nasrullah Stanikzai, advisor to President Hamid Karzai and a member of a government committee assigned to review the cases of the prisoners. "We reviewed their cases one by one. But there was not enough evidence against them," Stanikzai said. Stanikzai said 12 of the men were freed from a US-run jail at Bagram, the biggest NATO and US military base in Afghanistan. Michael Gottlieb, a civilian US official dealing with prisoners, however, said 18 had been freed from Bagram after a landmark peace conference on June 2. The release came after hundreds of tribal elders, religious leaders and other Afghan notables called at the "peace jirga" for ways to get insurgents to lay down their weapons. The gathering called on the US-backed administration to release ordinary Taliban fighters to gain the trust of rebels fighting against the government. Karzai then established a commission and ordered it to re-examine and free Taliban-linked prisoners detained on weak evidence. Stankzai, one of the five members of the committee, said that his body had found 35 other prisoners of "the same category". "They'll be freed soon," he said, adding that 19 of the men were being held by the US military and the rest by the Afghan government. He said "dozens" of prisoners could be freed under his committee's review. Gottlieb told AFP: "We share the commission's goal of ensuring that no detainee is held on the basis of unfounded charges or false accusations." "We welcome the input of the Consultative Peace Jirga Commission into our existing process of reviewing detainee cases," he added. Posted by: Fred 2010-06-22 |
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