By Kwangmin Ahn
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

KABUL, Afghanistan –Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered a review of the cases of every Taliban suspect in the country’s prisons. cThe head of international forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, told the BBC that Mr Karzai had asked “to get sovereignty over all detention operations in Afghanistan and we are working full speed to do that”, with the aim of achieving this by the end of the year.

General McChrystal said Mr. Karzai had asked him to release suspects in cases where evidence was doubtful, or where they did not pose a threat. He added that as Mr. Karzai’s review process took off, he anticipated that international forces would be able to provide “good visibility on the background why a person was detained, rationale for release or continued detention”.

Mr. Karzai’s announcement of prisoner case reviews is the first official response to the national peace conference, which ended on Friday. The conference discussed measures to promote reconciliation, including negotiations with militant factions, and recommended the release of Taliban suspects being held in Afghan police custody and by the US military if they were being held on “inaccurate statements or unsubstantiated allegations”.

Delegates to the conference also urged the Taliban to cut its ties with the al Qaeda terror network and asked that Taliban prisoners be freed from international detention centers. Among other things, the delegates recommended that names of all Taliban members should be removed from blacklists maintained by the United States and United Nations. Those lists contain the names of suspected militants that U.S. authorities and their allies would like to arrest.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Afghan officials resign over attack – 06 June 2010

CNN – Afghan officers quit over peace conference attack– 06 June 2010

BBC – President Hamid Karzai orders Afghan prisoner review– 06 June 2010