The U.S. military released 81 Afghan prisoners from detention Sunday in the first stage of a reconciliation program under which the majority of suspected Taliban members held in Guant��namo Bay and Afghanistan will be freed over coming months, the chief justice said.

In an effort to end the three-year Taliban insurgency, the U.S. military and the Afghan government have promised former Taliban supporters an amnesty and a place in the public life of Afghanistan if they renounce violence and return to a peaceful life. President Hamid Karzai has said he would seek to prosecute only the top leadership of the movement of 100 or so people.

After the Taliban failed to disrupt presidential elections in October in any major fashion, the U.S. military is reportedly preparing to scale down its offensive operations in the south and east of the country. The government at the same time is clearly eager to attend to the complaints of communities where U.S. forces have continued to raid houses and make arrests. Many families have said that U.S. forces have detained innocent people on false information.

Most of the detainees interviewed Sunday on their release from Bagram Air Base denied any involvement with the Taliban and said they had been wrongly detained. Some had been detained for as long as two years.

They arrived for a formal ceremony at the Supreme Court building in central Kabul in a fleet of buses. Looking subdued and drawn, they were dressed in orange socks and black jackets, apparently parting gifts from the U.S. military. Their release was arranged by a senior adviser of Karzai, and the chief justice, Fazel Hadi Shinwari, addressed the men before they were fed and sent home. He called on them not to bear a grudge and to accept their fate as coming from God.

What had happened to them was the result of 30 years of war and upheaval in Afghanistan, and the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, he said. "Now we should be careful and should think: 'What should we do, and as our country becomes a little bit peaceful, how we can make it more peaceful?"' he told them.

A U.S. military press officer declined to comment on the release of the prisoners, but in comments reported by Agence France-Presse, Colonel David Lamm, chief of staff for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, said the release had been requested by the Afghan government and was a gesture of reconciliation ahead of Id al-Adha, the Islamic feast of sacrifice, this week.

Source: Agencies