(ATN News): According to officials, 153 were released on Tuesday and 47 on Monday.\u00a0 This group is part of the batch of 320 prisoners that President Ashraf Ghani did not want to release based on the severity of their crimes.\u00a0 Officials described the 320 as hardcore and as having masterminded some of the most heinous attacks in Afghanistan, including Kabul, over the past few years. Others meanwhile are classified as drug kingpins.\u00a0 Sources speaking on anonymity have said the process could be finalized by Wednesday.\u00a0 Ghani\u2019s refusal to release the 320 prisoners resulted in stalled intra-Afghan negotiations but this week indications point towards the possibility of talks starting in Doha this week.\u00a0 The news of the prisoner release meanwhile came after a phone call between Ghani and the United States\u2019 National Security Advisor (NSA) Robert O\u2019Brien on Monday night. O\u2019Brien discussed the need for intra-Afghan talks to start \u201cwithout delay.\u201d The National Security Council said in a Twitter post that O\u2019Brien had also reiterated US support for a \u201csovereign, democratic, and unified Afghanistan that never again serves as a source of international terrorism.\u201d \u201cThe US stands with the Afghan security forces who have made tremendous sacrifices for the Afghan people,\u201d NSA tweeted. Meanwhile, the Presidential Palace also said in a tweet that O\u2019Brien told Ghani that the US would continue supporting the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces. \u201cThe prisoner swap between the Taliban and the Afghan government was one of the issues that the two sides discussed on. Both sides emphasized the immediate start of intra-Afghan negotiations,\u201d Ghani\u2019s spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(ATN News): According to officials, 153 were released on Tuesday and 47 on Monday.\u00a0 This group is part of the batch of 320 prisoners that President Ashraf Ghani did not want to release based on the severity of their crimes.\u00a0 Officials described the 320 as hardcore and as having masterminded some of the most heinous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2907,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2906\/revisions\/2907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}