KABUL: The Afghan government would release a first group of suspected Taliban militants held in Bagram prison within two weeks, a top Afghan government official said on Monday.
In a statement, the head of the Criminal Cases Review Commission Abdul Shakoor Dadras said that 37 prisoners would be freed soon. “Their dossiers are reviewed, completed and we have ordered their release,” Dadras told a foreign news agency.
“They will be released from the prison after the required technical and security procedures are completed. This will, I think, take more than one week and less than two weeks,” he said.
Dadras further said that the officials are reviewing the cases of the remaining prisoners.
On January 9, the Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered the release of 72 prisoners held at Parwan Detention Center, a jail at the US-run Bagram Air Base north of the capital, Kabul. But the decision angered the US, which called the prisoners “dangerous insurgents” who had “Afghan blood on their hands.”
