Under international laws, "no government can hand over a country's citizens to a third country as a prisoner," it said, adding that Kabul is "strongly protesting" the move. "The government of Afghanistan ... calls for the release of its citizens so that they can, in accordance with international laws, enjoy their freedom," it added. The former Taliban officials are still considered influential in the Islamist movement. They were transferred in an exchange securing the freedom of US Army Sergeant Bergdahl, who was captured by insurgents in June 2009, and who was the only American soldier being held in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sunday an operation to free soldier Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for Taliban prisoners was undertaken to save his life, as the insurgents' leader hailed the swap as a "big victory".
Bergdahl, the only US soldier captured by the Taliban since the war began in 2001, was freed after almost five years in captivity in exchange for five senior insurgents who had been detained at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay. Both parties claimed success for the dramatic deal, which was brokered by Qatar. Hagel even suggested it could provide a breakthrough for peace in Afghanistan.
But the swap was criticised by several Republican lawmakers, who demanded to know whether the Taliban prisoners would return to fighting the United States.
Hagel provided new details on the operation to free the 28-year-old Bergdahl to reporters while en route to Bagram air base north of Kabul, where he paid a brief, unannounced visit to meet with more than a dozen members of the team that carried out the rescue mission.
"We believed that the information we had, the intelligence we had, was such that Sergeant Bergdahl's safety and health were both in jeopardy, and in particularly his health deteriorating," Hagel said, according to a Pentagon transcript.
"It was our judgement that if we could find an opening and move very quickly with that opening, that we needed to get him out of there, essentially to save his life."
Dozens of US Special Forces troops backed up by helicopters were sent to an undisclosed location in eastern Afghanistan where Taliban militants handed over Bergdahl, defence officials have said. "Fortunately, no shots were fired," Hagel explained. "There was no violence. It went as well as we not only had expected and planned, but I think as well as it could have."
In an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" from Bagram, Hagel said the prisoner trade could provide a window of opportunity for peace in Afghanistan.
"So maybe this will be a new opening that can produce an agreement," he said, noting that the United States had engaged in talks with the Taliban in the past.
Mullah Mohammad Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, issued a rare statement praising the release of the five Guantanamo detainees as a "big victory," in what some saw as a potential confidence-building measure.
Bergdahl's release came four days after President Barack Obama announced a timetable for a final US pullout by end-2016.
The five Guantanamo prisoners were named as Mohammad Fazl, Norullah Noori, Mohammed Nabi, Khairullah Khairkhwa and Abdul Haq Wasiq - all influential former officials of the Taliban regime toppled by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.
They were swapped for Idaho native Bergdahl, who disappeared from a base in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province in 2009.
A senior US administration official confirmed that the United States had transferred the five Afghan Guantanamo detainees to Qatar, as did a Taliban statement which added that the men were with their families. A Qatari source said the Taliban detainees would spend one year in the Gulf state, while Kabul called for their immediate release, calling the transfer illegal.