Prisoners granted right to challenge detentions
WASHINGTON - Hundreds of prisoners held by the US military in Afghanistan will get the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system to be put in place this week, administration officials said.
The new system will be applied to the more than 600 Afghans held at the Bagram military base, and will mark the first substantive change in the overseas detention policies that President Obama inherited from the Bush administration.
International human rights organizations have long criticized conditions at the Bagram facility, where detainees have been held - many of them for years - without access to lawyers or even the right to know the reason for their imprisonment. Afghans have cited Bagram, where virtually all prisoners in US custody are held, as a major source of resentment toward coalition forces, a senior administration official said.
As part of a prisonwide protest that began in July, detainees at Bagram, located north of Kabul, have refused visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross and have declined video teleconferences with their families.
Under the new rules, each detainee will be assigned a US military official, not a lawyer, to represent his interests and examine evidence. In proceedings before a board composed of military officers, detainees will have the right to call witnesses and present evidence when it is “reasonably available,’’ the official said. The boards will determine whether detainees should be held by the United States, turned over to Afghan authorities, or released. For those held, the process will be repeated at six-month intervals.
The Bagram system is similar to the annual Administrative Review Boards used for suspected terrorists at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Officials said the review proceedings at Bagram will mark an improvement in part because they will be held in detainees’ home countries - where witnesses and evidence are close at hand.
“This process is about doing the right thing - only holding those we have to,’’ said the administration official, who requested anonymity.
Human rights organizations described the new system as inadequate. “Any reforms in US detentions in Afghanistan is an improvement, but it remains to be seen whether the new procedures will cure the ills of arbitrary and indefinite detention that have been the hallmark of detentions in Bagram,’’ said Sahr Muhammed Ally of the New York-based group Human Rights First.
