03 May 2012 :

Afghanistan and Iran have agreed to a prisoner exchange, the Foreign Ministry in Kabul said, a sign of warming relations between the two neighbours ahead of the planned withdrawal of foreign combat forces from Afghanistan in 2014. Thousands of Afghan prisoners are held in Iranian jails, some awaiting the death penalty for narcotics trafficking, and their incarceration caused tension between the two countries last year. Janan Musazai, a foreign ministry spokesman, told Reuters that it is effective immediately, adding that Iran is holding around 3,000 Afghans in its prisons. It was unclear how many Iranian prisoners are in Afghan prisons, Musazai said. The two neighbours first drew up rules defining the terms of such exchanges in 2006, allowing prisoners or their families to choose whether to be incarcerated in Iran or Afghanistan. The Foreign Ministry praised the move by Iran as "a strengthening in bilateral relations" - but it said in a statement that the agreement applied only to prisoners who had at least six months to run on their jail terms. Kabul said it was "shocked" last year by reports that Iran had executed a large number of Afghan prisoners, most convicted for drug trafficking between the world's two top users of opium.