At least 11 Taliban prisoners, including their two governors, were reportedly released from Bagram prison on Sunday.
According to reports in local Afghan media and some outlets close to Taliban, the inmates were released as a first step of a prisoner swap between US and Taliban after their representatives met in Pakistan last week.
Nunn.Asia, a website mostly publishes news in line with Taliban policy, first reported the news. It said in a report that Shaikh Abdul Rahim, former Taliban governor for eastern Kunar province, and Malawi Abdul Rashid, their shadow governor for western Nimroz province, were among the freed inmates. The report said Abdul Rahim was arrested two year back in Jalalabad, the capital city of Nangarhar province, but did not provide any detail on the timing and location of Abdul Rashid’s arrest.
The report also did not mention the release as part of any prisoner swap, but some other unconfirmed reports suggest that it is the first step to an inmate exchange which will see two professors of American University (AUAF) of Afghanistan, one American and the other Australian, freed from Taliban captivity. Sources close to Taliban said the 11 prisoners were handed over to Taliban in northern Afghanistan as a trust building measure between the two sides. Taliban will release AUAF’s professors after the release of Anas Haqqani, whose is in the captivity of Afghan government in the Bagram prison.
Kevin King and Timothy Weeks, two of the university’s professors, were kidnapped in 2016.
US citizen King, along with Australian national Weeks, were kidnapped shortly after leaving the university compound on Darulaman Road on the evening of August 7, 2016.
Afghan government is yet to comment on the development, but the deputy foreign minister for political affair, Mohammad Idres Zaman, on Saturday told a press conference in Kabul that Khalilzad’s visit to Islamabad was not aimed at resuming peace talks, but for discussion on prisoner exchange. However, he did not provide further details.
This comes as US President Donald Trump called off US-Taliban peace talks last month after a Taliban suicide bomber killed 12 people, including an American soldier.
