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| February 10, 2002 | Sunday | Ziqa’ad 26, 1422 |
270 Taliban prisoners released
KABUL, Feb 9: Around 270 Taliban prisoners were released in a ceremony at the presidential palace on Saturday night under the watch of interim leader Hamid Karzai.
The ragged prisoners from all over Afghanistan were delivered by bus to the palace grounds and then allowed to walk free.
Wrapped in blankets against the bitter cold, some of the prisoners smiled as they filed past Karzai, appointed in December to lead a six-month interim administration. While the US military hunts down Taliban leaders and foreign soldiers of the Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, thousands of rank and file Afghan Taliban conscripts have already been released.
“We decided some time back we should release everybody who did not have a bad record, who were not terrorists but just ordinary people,” Karzai said.
“I asked them if they wanted to be soldiers and they said no. I asked them if they wanted to work in the fields and they said yes. It was fun,” he said.
The prisoners would be given accommodation for the night and would then leave for their homes on Sunday morning with an allowance of 500,000 afghanis (around $17), officials said.
MOUNTING CRITICISM: The US on Saturday held its most senior Taliban official to date in its five-month-old war on terror, but faced growing international criticism of its widening campaign.
As Karzai released the prisoners, there was growing international disquiet about the US treatment of its own captured Al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.
AT ODDS WITH ICRC: In Geneva the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it and Washington were at odds over Washington’s decision not to recognise captured Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters as prisoners of war.
“There are divergent views between the US and the ICRC on the procedures which apply on how to determine that the persons detained are not entitled to prisoner of war status,” the ICRC said in a statement. “The US and the ICRC will pursue their dialogue on this issue.”
US President George W. Bush decided Thursday that the 1949 Geneva Conventions would apply to captured Taliban fighters taken from Afghanistan to a US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but not to Al-Qaeda members there. However, Washington said that neither group would be accorded prisoner of war status. New arrivals at the detention centre in Cuba on Thursday brought the number of people being held there to 186. Another 269 prisoners are being detained by the US military in Afghanistan.
CONCERN OVER EXPANSION: Concern also continued to flow over signs that the US was expanding its war on terror to other countries.
While taking care to avoid directly criticizing Bush’s rece