WORLD IN BRIEF

Military to Investigate Prisons in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The U.S. military on Saturday named a brigadier general to carry out a review of its secretive Afghan prisons, while officials in Washington revealed that they were looking into the deaths of two more Afghans.

Brig. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, deputy operational commander at the U.S. military's main base at Bagram, north of Kabul, will carry out the "top to bottom" review and deliver a report by mid-June, said a spokesman, Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager.

The commander of the 20,000 U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, ordered the review this month in response to the growing scandal about prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jacoby will visit each of about 20 U.S. detention centers, including the main facility at Bagram "to ensure internationally accepted standards of handling detainees are being met," Mansager said.

The United States recently announced two new criminal investigations into allegations of abuse by former prisoners in Afghanistan, where it is also under pressure over the unexplained deaths of prisoners in custody.

Several investigations into the deaths of inmates detained by both the U.S. military and the CIA are underway.

EUROPE

• STOCKHOLM -- Egypt has agreed to an inquiry into the treatment of two men extradited from Sweden, one of whom said he was tortured, the Swedish Foreign Ministry said. Sweden deported Ahmed Hussein Agiza to Egypt in 2001 to stand trial for violent acts against the government.

Sweden said it had deported the two Egyptians after receiving diplomatic assurances from Cairo of fair treatment.

AFRICA

• MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Thousands of Somalis took to the streets of Mogadishu to protest Kenya's arrest of one of their country's best-known warlords, who has been jailed for a month for unpaid debt.

A crowd estimated at several thousand demanded Kenya free Hussein Aideed, who was seized during Somali peace talks in Nairobi on Thursday on the orders of a Kenyan magistrate.

Members of the Somali National Alliance, to which Aideed belongs, accused Kenya of humiliating Aideed, who came to power after the death of his father, Mohamed Farah Aideed, whose forces killed 18 U.S. troops in a failed raid in Mogadishu in 1993.

• HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Two journalists with Zimbabwe's last independent Sunday newspaper were re-arrested on charges of publishing false material to incite public disorder. The Standard's editor, Bornwell Chakaodza, and reporter Valentine Maponga were held for six hours Wednesday over a May 16 article reporting that relatives of a slain mining executive blamed unidentified senior government figures for his death.