The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) on Monday said cases of Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) prisoners should be investigated transparently and that their release should in no way influence rule of law in the country.

They also said the release of the prisoners should not support the culture of impunity in the country.

The High Peace Council (HPC) and the Afghan government have not commented on the progress made in this regard, but AIHRC said the prisoners’ cases should be investigated individually and that each prisoner should be held accountable for what he has done.

“The prisoners should be released in accordance with the law. However, freeing a group together has its problems and in the past we have seen that freeing groups increased terrorist attacks,” Musa Mahmoudi, AIHRC executive director said.

A Hizb-e-Islami spokesman, Hamid Azizi, meanwhile said they are waiting for President Ashraf Ghani to sign off on the release of at least 80 of the group’s prisoners.

Hizb-e-Islami has submitted a few lists of names of its prisoners to government. So far the names of 80 prisoners have been noted as ready to be released. Once Ghani has signed this off, these prisoners will be freed.

“We have sent a list of 570 prisoners to government and joint committees are working on the list. Out of the 570, the names of 83 prisoners have been finalized and we hope Ghani signs their release decree,” Azizi said.

Pul-e-Charkhi prison officials recently told TOLOnews that a number of prisoners listed by Hizb-e-Islami as their own, were in fact jailed on charges of having ties with  the Taliban.

However, Hizb-e-Islami also acknowledges the issue around the release of its prisoners is a complicated one.