Human rights activists on Tuesday have organized a conference in which the Bagram prisoner releases were discussed.
The activists criticized the move and said releasing Taliban and other insurgent group members without trial was against the Afghan Constitution and human rights principles.
Tuesday's conference was organized by the Transitional Justice Coordination Group (TJOG) and Human Rights Focus Organization (HRFO), who called for the dissolution of the Review Committee charged by President Hamid Karzai with evaluating detainees at Bagram and deciding whether or not to release them.
The Review Committee has approved the release of over 500 inmates since August, with a fresh tranche of 88 prisoners intended to be freed at the start of this year.
However, the Committee has met some blowback, especially from the U.S. and its supporters who see the releases as a threat to past progress made in the fight against insurgency.
The activists on Tuesday echoed previous calls from Afghan lawmakers for the government to form a special court to vet the cases of prisoners at Bagram, rather than a Presidentially appointed committee. They went on to criticize the process that has been taken for the releases, which has completely cut out the courts.
Activists raised a number of concerns about the effects the releases could have on stability in Afghanistan, and the future of transitional justice in Afghanistan. - the process of holding past human rights violators and war criminals accountable .
“The release of inmates at this time could be challenging for the election process,” a member of the Transitional Justice
Coordination Group named Azaryoun Matin said.
The activists took the opportunity to discuss the upcoming elections more thoroughly, repeating calls to election and judicial officials to better coordinate in the review of candidates in order to prevent past human rights abusers from being able to compete in the elections.
“The documents of Presidential candidates should be referred from the Electoral Complaints Commission to the Attorney General's office to be investigated seriously, and then they should be sent to the courts," a conference attendee named Leya Jawad said.
The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has announced that it sent the documents of some Presidential candidates to the Attorney General's office for investigation, but ECC officials declined to disclose the names of those candidates.