KABUL (HRNW) – The Afghan government said it would release another 100 Taliban inmates Thursday, even though the insurgents have walked out of talks over a comprehensive prisoner swap and dismissed Kabul’s piecemeal freeing of captives as “unacceptable”.
The administration of President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday released 100 low-risk Taliban prisoners who had vowed never to return to the battlefield, and officials said the same number of insurgents with similar profiles would be set free Thursday.
The releases come as Ghani faces an ongoing political crisis, US fury over a floundering peace process and a growing coronavirus epidemic in Afghanistan, where officials fear the disease could run riot through the country’s prisons.
Kabul “will release 100 Taliban prisoners today based on their health condition, age and length of remaining sentence as part of our efforts for peace and containment of COVID-19,” Javid Faisal, spokesman for the Office of the National Security Council (NSC), said on Twitter.
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