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Afghans to allow legal challenges at Bagram jail: official
Kabul (AFP) Jan 11, 2010 Hundreds of inmates held without trial at a controversial prison on a US base will be allowed to challenge their detention through the courts when Afghanistan takes over the jail, officials said Monday. The prison at Bagram Air Field north of Kabul has been compared to the Cuba-based Guantanamo Bay detention centre and Abu Ghraib in Iraq due to harsh treatment of prisoners detained there without charge. In 2002 two Afghan prisoners at Bagram were fatally beaten by US troops. Since then US officials have consistently stressed that conditions and treatment have improved. Afghan officials said Monday that hundreds of Afghan troops would be trained as prison wardens before control of the Bagram facility is ceded. No date has been set for the handover, which was formally agreed on Saturday, although once the prison is under Afghan control, inmates will be able to challenge their detention through the Afghan courts, a defence ministry spokesman said. General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the army would take over the running of the prison until the country's judicial authorities, which handle prisons, were able to do so. "The existence of the Bagram prison has undermined national sovereignty, so Afghans have long been asked why, when we have a legal government, our citizens are taken away never to be heard from again," Azimi told reporters. The prison was established in the wake of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, which unseated the extremist Taliban regime, to hold prisoners taken during that campaign. Last year new buildings were constructed on the base, the biggest US military facility in Afghanistan, to replace the decades-old prison facilities that drew criticism from rights groups and the Afghan government. The Bagram prison has been a cause of tension between President Hamid Karzai and his Western backers, notably the United States, along with the issue of civilian casualties. About 400 Afghans have been returned to civilian custody from Bagram and the Guantanamo Bay since 2006, officials said, adding that around 360 more are still in Afghan-run prisons.
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