Kabul, Jan 13: Afghanistan has released some 50
Taliban prisoners captured in the hardline militia's northern
stronghold of Kunduz just weeks after the US-led bombing
campaign was launched, an official said today.
The men, all Afghans, were jailed in Sheberghan prison in
northern Afghanistan after their arrests in the wake of a
two-week siege of Kunduz by anti-Taliban fighters in November
2001. Thousands of Taliban fighters surrendered during the
siege.
The prisoners were released Friday under a decree issued
by president Hamid Karzai, said Sayeed Noorullah Agha, an
official based in the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
"These prisoners were part of 3,700 Afghan, Pakistani and
Arab Taliban prisoners who were arrested altogether in Kunduz
province," Agha told.
He said 1,300 prisoners, including 500 Pakistanis,
remained in Sheberghan, notorious as one of Afghanistan's
grimmest charnel-house type jails.
The prisoners' release was "a sign of a goodwill towards
south and southwest Afghanistan," Agha said.
Relations between the country's north and south were
strained during the Taliban's harsh five-year regime, with the
Islamic zealots hailing mainly from the ethnic
Pashtun-dominated south.
A 16-man delegation of elders and officials from the
central province of Uruzgan and southern province of Kandahar
had visited Mazar-i-Sharif to seek better relations with the
north.
Bureau Report
