U.S. gives tour of new Afghan detention center

Military calls complex an improvement for detainees' conditions

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, AFGHANISTAN -- By the end of the month, the U.S. military plans to begin moving the first of its approximately 700 detainees at Bagram air field to a new $60 million holding complex in an attempt to provide better living conditions and separate committed fighters from those who are ready to re-enter Afghan society.

During the course of the war, American military officials have kept the Bagram detention center hidden from the public, and its detainees -- all but about 30 of whom are Afghans -- live there without being charged. Human rights groups have criticized the prison for a lack of due process and expressed skepticism that the new facility and programs would do enough to change controversial American detention practices in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, the U.S. military led journalists and officials from non-governmental organizations on tours of the new unoccupied facility at Bagram, although they were not shown where detainees are currently held.

The new detention center, which has a capacity to hold 1,140 detainees in group cells plus 104 others in individual holding pens, is intended not only to provide more space for vocational classes, family visits, medical check-ups, and hearing rooms for military tribunals, but also to keep apart hard-core insurgents from others who might be reconcilable, military officials said.

"This facility and these reintegration programs represent real progress, and in the coming months and years they will promote transparency and legitimacy," said Brig. Gen. Mark S. Martins, the interim commander of a new task force that oversees detainee operations in Afghanistan.

Reforming the country's detention system, particularly in the Afghan-run detention centers that house about 15,000 people, has become a priority for the Obama administration. In his war assessment earlier this year, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, wrote that detention centers, which hold some 2,500 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, are breeding grounds for terrorism, allowing insurgents to organize attacks and radicalize other prisoners. The lack of transparency of American-run detention programs led Afghans to see them as "secretive and lacking in due process," according to the assessment.

"This problem can no longer be ignored," McChrystal wrote.

The new detention center eventually will be turned over to the Afghan government, but U.S. military officials did not say when this would occur. By the end of the year all the detainees are expected to move from the current Bagram prison to the new facility. Most of them will live in communal cells of up to 20 prisoners and be issued a mattress, a prayer rug, a prayer cap, a Koran and two blankets.

The detainees will not be given access to lawyers but will be assigned a U.S. military "personal representative." They have to be told within 14 days in detention why they are being held and then after 60 days come before a three-member panel of officers for a review of their case, followed by subsequent periodic reviews. Military officials said witnesses could participate in the hearings and that detainee representatives would help find evidence that could exonerate them.

The changes at the new detention facility follow a similar overhaul in Iraq led by Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, who sought to separate radical fighters from others and expand educational programs for detainees. Earlier this year Stone spent several weeks in Afghanistan to study detention policies and recommend changes.

"People are finally taking it seriously, it's a recognition that there have been serious concerns about how Americans have handled detentions, including allegations of torture," said John Dempsey, a Kabul-based analyst for the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Human rights groups said these measures still do not provide fair treatment for detainees. A joint statement from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Human Rights First said detainees should be given lawyers and allowed to defend themselves in front of an independent and impartial tribunal. They also said that the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission should have access to the detainees. Currently only the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose findings are confidential, can visit them.

"This tour is one step in what we hope will be many more steps in U.S. detention reform. What's paramount are the due process concerns," said Jonathan Horowitz, a human rights expert with the Open Society Institute, who visited the facility Sunday. "You can't grade human rights on a curve. And if the previous administration set such a low bar, it's not hard to make it better, but what's needed is to make it good."