Brigadier general to review US prisons in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The US military named a long-serving brigadier general yesterday to review its secretive Afghan prisons, while officials in Washington disclosed that they were looking into the deaths of two more Afghans.
Brigadier General Charles H. Jacoby, deputy operational commander at the US 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, Lieutenant Colonel Tucker Mansager.
The commander of the 20,000 US-led soldiers in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Barno, ordered the review earlier this month in response to the growing scandal about prisoner abuse in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Jacoby will visit each of the approximately 20 American detention centers, including the main jail at Bagram and others at smaller bases around the country "to ensure internationally accepted standards of handling detainees are being met," Mansager said.
"He will ensure facilities are adequate, procedures are in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and are being followed correctly and fully, and that staffing and capabilities are adequate to the task," Mansager said.
The United States recently announced two new criminal investigations into allegations of abuse made by former prisoners in Afghanistan.
An investigation into the deaths of two Bagram inmates in December 2002, both ruled homicides after military autopsies, is still incomplete. The CIA inspector general is investigating the death of another detainee in eastern Kunar Province in June 2003.
A senior military official told reporters in Washington Friday that two other deaths in custody in Afghanistan were also under scrutiny, one in southern Helmand Province last November, and another when a detainee was shot when he lunged for a weapon.
Mansager said he was unaware of either of the new cases.
Jacoby, a decorated West Point graduate who has served in the Army for nearly 26 years, arrived in Afghanistan in April.
