U.S. Military Vows to Keep Afghan Jails Secret

The families of two Afghans who died from wounds sustained in a U.S. detention center at Bagram, just north of Kabul, 18 months ago, are still waiting for the outcome of a U.S. investigation.


In Baghdad Wednesday, the first court-martial began of U.S. soldiers who abused inmates at the Abu Ghraib jail, weeks after an international outcry over mistreatment first broke.


The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant-General David Barno, has ordered a "top-to-bottom" review of conditions and methods used at a network of around 20 detention centers where Islamic militant suspects are held in Afghanistan.


U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Tucker Mansager told reporters Wednesday the review would be carried out by a general and completed within a month.


"The appointed general will visit every facility to ensure internationally accepted standards of handling detainees are being met," he told a regular news briefing in Kabul.


Mansager said the U.S. military had yet to respond to a May 10 request from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, which has collected more than 40 recent complaints of mistreatment, for access to the main jail at Bagram.


He also said journalists would not be allowed to see it, despite reporters being given access this month to Abu Ghraib, depicted in images of abuse of prisoners by American soldiers that sparked a backlash across the Arab world.


"It's the coalition's continued policy to treat persons under confinement in the spirit of the Geneva Conventions.


"Part of that spirit is to ensure that the persons under confinement are not subject to any kind of exploitation. It is the coalition's position that allowing media into the facilities would compromise that protection."


GROWING PRESSURE


The U.S. military, which leads 20,000 troops in the hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban, has come under intense scrutiny since the prisoner abuse scandal broke in Iraq and fresh allegations of mistreatment surfaced in Afghanistan.


A former police officer from near the city of Gardez said he was beaten and sexually abused during around 40 days in U.S. custody last year, and Human Rights Watch has called the mistreatment of detainees "systemic" in Afghanistan.


Two new investigations have been launched this month into prisoner abuse. A third, into the death in custody of two Afghans 18 months ago, has yet to be completed, to the dismay of family and friends of the men who died.


Both suffered "blunt force injuries" to the legs at Bagram, according to press reports quoting their death certificates.


Mansager said a large number of changes were made to procedures at Bagram in the wake of the deaths, and the U.S. military had nothing to hide.


"We're very comfortable with what we're doing, but nonetheless we are always in search of improvements and changes."





But the involvement of Barno, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is a clear sign of unease at the potential fallout from complaints of abuse.

"Certainly the situation in Iraq has brought some more focus to this," Mansager said.

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