PESHAWAR, Aug 5: An Afghan human rights body is perturbed over the state of prisoners in Pakistan and Afghanistan, asking both the countries to set free the prisoners detained in minor offences.

The chairman of Afghan Organisation of Human Rights and Environmental Protection, Abdul Rehman Hotaki, disclosed that 495 Pakistani prisoners of war were languishing in unhygienic and overcrowded cells in Shibarghan jail since the fall of Taliban government.

“Certainly, Afghan government declared Pakistanis as POWs, but are not treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention”, the human rights activist replied to a question.

A large number of Pakistani volunteers went inside Afghanistan to take part in the war along with the Taliban against the US-led coalition forces.

Since the installation of transition government in Kabul President Karzai had so far released over 700 Pakistanis from different jails.

Mr Hotaki said that he along with a group of human rights activists recently visited the infamous Shibarghan jail to ascertain physical condition of the inmates and facilities being provided by the jail authorities.

He said the organization would send another team to Kabul prison in near future to observe the condition of Pakistani POWs.

He informed that a fact finding team visited the jail about eight months back and expressed concern over the miserable condition of the inmates and the jail. Now, he claimed, situation had improved. The authorities had set up a clinic inside the jail and an Italian organization was providing medicines, he said.

Mr Hotaki said: “Pakistani prisoners are concerned over their future”, quoting prisoners as saying that the ICRC had failed to deliver letters to their families in Pakistan for the last five months.

“His organization are making arrangements to deliver letters to the prisoners’ families in Pakistan,” he pledged.

When asked about the presence of Pakistanis in private jails in Afghanistan, he said there were authentic reports that some warlords had Pakistani captives in their private jails. But no body had identified location of these private detention centres.

He said that he met senior officials in Shibarghan including governor of Jowzjan province Haji Roz Mohammad Noor and discussed with them the prisoners issue. He quoted the governor that he requested the central government to release Pakistani POWs immediately or shift them to Kabul jail. The central government would decide about the future of the POWs, not the provincial, he said.

He said that the Afghan government was making arrangements to hand over the affairs of prisons from interior ministry to the ministry of justice.

He denied reports about the death of Pakistanis in Shibarghan prison and said that the team members found four prisoners in the jail clinic, but their conditions were stable.

Mr Hotaki asked Islamabad to release Afghan prisoners, who had been arrested by the local law enforcement agencies in petty cases. He suggested that Pakistan should set free Afghan prisoners before the visit of foreign minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri to Kabul.

He said that Islamabad and Kabul should not link the prisoners issue with the current cold relations between the two countries and release them on humanitarian grounds. He said that his organization was seeking permission from the Pakistani authorities to allow his activists to visit different jails to look into the condition of Afghan prisoners.