The prisoners included a dozen men detained by the US military at Bagram Air Base, two under police custody in Kabul and six from a small prison in the eastern province Khost, the official told AFP.
"They were detained for suspected links to armed opposition groups," said Nasrullah Stanikzai, advisor to President Hamid Karzai and a member of a government committee assigned to review the cases of the prisoners."We reviewed their cases one by one. But there was not enough evidence against them," Stanikzai said.
The release came after hundreds of tribal elders, religious leaders and other Afghan notables called in a Kabul peace conference earlier this month for ways to get insurgents to lay down their weapons.
The peace "jirga" called on the US-backed administration to release ordinary Taliban fighters to gain the trust of rebels fighting against the government.Karzai then established a commission and ordered it to re-examine and free Taliban-linked prisoners detained on weak evidence.Stankzai, one of the five members of the committee, said that his body had found 35 other prisoners of "the same category"."They'll be freed soon," he said, adding that 19 of the men were being held by the US military and the rest by the Afghan government.