Efforts underway to assist Afghan prisoners

Afghan officials in Pakistan have asked Islamabad to allow them to visit jails where more than six thousand Afghans are imprisoned under various charges. “We want to determine the charges against them but we don’t want to get the criminals out,” Afghan diplomat Abdul Jabbar Naeemi told IRIN on Friday in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. “The Pakistani authorities have been helping us whenever we asked for assistance,” he said. Afghan diplomats in Pakistan believe there are at least 6,242 Afghan prisoners languishing in different prisons across the country. Their charges range from drug smuggling, murder, theft and fraud, while others have been imprisoned for being illegally present in the country. Some 241 Afghan women and another 100 children under the age of 16 are also included in these numbers. More than 400 Afghans were arrested in a crackdown following the assassination of two policemen in Islamabad’s twin city Rawalpindi in early May. Most of them were later released. According to a fact-finding report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in July, up to 450 Afghans languish in some 19 prisons across Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The province accommodates most of the more than one million Afghan refugees in the country. Abdul Rehman Hotaki head of the Afghan Organisation of Human Rights and Environmental Protection maintained that the prisoners were not receiving a fair treatment. Hotaki proposed a joint commission of the UN, human rights bodies, Pakistani and Afghan officials to resolve the issue. “If such a commission looks into the causes of imprisonment, I hope they will find a lasting solution,” he said.