Taliban slams release of prisoners

Newly freed prisoners greeting each other at Bagram prison.

The Afghan government said it would release another 100 Taliban inmates on 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.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the step was inadequate. A Taliban team came to Kabul last week to meet the government to discuss a comprehensive prisoner swap that was initially supposed to see 5,000 Taliban released in return for 1,000 Afghan security forces. But they abandoned the “fruitless” meetings on Tuesday and returned to Kandahar.