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'Taliban rebels held in Pak are civilians'
Nearly 60 rebels held in Pakistan and handed over to Afghanistan were actually ordinary citizens, a provincial governor said.
Nearly 60 suspected Taliban arrested in Pakistan and handed to Afghanistan were actually ordinary citizens and they have been released, a governor said on Friday.
However most of a second group of 33 men extradited to Afghanistan on Thursday did appear to have links with the Taliban militia that is fighting the government, Kandahar provincial governor Asadullah Khalid said.
Pakistani security forces arrested the first batch of 57 men a month ago saying they may be Taliban guerrillas.
They were handed over to Afghan authorities in the southern province of Kandahar last week.
"We interrogated them after they were handed over to us last week," Khalid said. "Not even a single one of them is Taliban," he told a news conference in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and focus of its insurgency.
The men were just ordinary refugees living in the Pakistani city of Quetta, he said. They had all been released, he said.
Some of the men told the agency that Pakistani authorities had taken blood from them before sending them across the border. It was unclear why this was done.
Khalid said that intelligence officials suspected however that most of the second batch of 33 that arrived yesterday could be affiliated to the religious movement forced out of government in late 2001.
Afghan officials have accused their eastern neighbour of not doing enough to stop Taliban guerrillas launching attacks against the Afghan government and foreign troops here from Pakistani soil.
