Inmates Detail U.S. Prison Near Kabul

Capt. Amanullah, who was imprisoned in Bagram, the U.S. prison for terror suspects in Afghanistan, reads a religious book at his home in Kabul, Afghanistan in this photo of Sept. 7, 2006. Amanullah insists he was imprisoned because Afghan rivals lied about him to the U.S. Army. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq) (Musadeq Sadeq - AP)

The U.S. military points to other improvements. Spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick said that chamber pots have been replaced with internal plumbing and privacy screens for personal hygiene. There are now opportunities for education _ reading, writing, math _ and voluntary work-for-pay.

But the most enduring concern is not prison conditions but the legal limbo of detainees _ and concerns over how many ended up there in the first place.

A Western official, who requested anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities, recounted as an example how earlier this year, three armed, plainclothes police were rounded up and dispatched to Bagram after they were stopped at a roadblock in an eastern province during a U.S. military operation.

He estimated that as many as half those incarcerated at the American base, located an hour's drive north of Kabul, shouldn't be there. "Once you're in, the process of getting out is very long and difficult," the official said.

Mubibbullah Khan, 38, at the time a respected district chief in southern Zabul province, was held at Bagram 8 1/2 months after his September 2005 arrest on suspicion he was a Taliban informant _ although he'd spent most of the hardline regime's rule in exile in Pakistan. He believes he was framed by a rival within the provincial government.

Amanullah, who in the 1980s commanded thousands of anti-Soviet mujahedeen, funded by the U.S., claims he was set up by former communists in Afghan intelligence. He said that a sequence of American interrogators in Bagram questioned him, accusing him among other things of concealing a cache of weapons under a cemetery where they alleged his militia had once massacred 1,800 ethnic Hazara tribespeople _ which he maintains is nonsense.

"I have enemies from during the civil war and during the communist time. All these people are giving false information," he said.

Sayed Sharif Yousofy, spokesman for the Afghan reconciliation commission that has assisted the release of about 400 detainees from Bagram and Guantanamo, including Amanullah and Mubibbullah, also said many had been arrested on "wrong information."

But the Western official said for all its legal shortcomings, Bagram offers much better security than grisly Afghan prisons, where conditions _ while improving _ are very poor and Taliban militants have "a well-organized operation for springing people out of jail" through bribery.

NATO nations fighting in Afghanistan are investing in Afghan prisons and now handing over detained insurgents directly to its authorities. Meanwhile Afghan detainees in U.S. custody at Guantanamo and Bagram are to be shifted to Afghan custody at Policharki prison when a new high-security wing and staff training is complete _ Fitzpatrick says by summer 2007.

Afghan Justice Minister Mohammed Sarwar Danish said each detainee's case would then be assessed by the Afghan attorney general, and they will either be freed or put on trial. Fitzpatrick said some Afghans held for "acts of terrorism against the U.S." could still be held at Bagram.

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Associated Press writer Amir Shah contributed to this report.