Bagram inmates win right to challenge detention

For the first time, the United States is granting some 600 prisoners held at a US detention center dubbed Afghanistan's Guantanamo the right to challenge their detention, officials said.

Some of the men, many of whom have languished for years at the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, will now be aided by a US military official to gather witnesses and evidence in their cases, the Defense Department said.

They will then be allowed to defend themselves, and even call witnesses before a military body entrusted with reviewing the cases against them.

"It's basically a review procedure that ensures people go in front of a panel periodically to give them the opportunity to contest their detention," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

The inmates would be aided by a uniformed "personal representative" who would "guide them through this administrative process, to help gather witness statements," Whitman added.

"It's something that we had used in Iraq to help us manage the detainee population and ultimately reduce the detainee population by ensuring that we are only holding those that are the most dangerous threats."

The Bagram prison has served since 2002 as a holding site for terror suspects captured outside Afghanistan and Iraq.

But unlike the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay -- the US naval base in Cuba where some 229 "war on terror" detainees are still held -- the Bagram inmates have had no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants."

President Barack Obama's administration argued in a filing with the US Court of Appeals in Washington late Monday that terror suspects at Bagram should not be allowed to challenge their decision in US courts, a right the Supreme Court has granted to Guantanamo detainees.

US District Judge John Bates ruled in April that foreign prisoners held at Bagram should also be provided that right, enshrined in the ancient writ of habeas corpus.

The administration argued in its 85-page brief that Bates's ruling "reverses long-standing law, imposes great practical problems, conflicts with the considered judgment of both political branches, and risks opening the federal courts to habeas claims brought by detainees held in other theaters of war during future military actions."

Obama has mandated a comprehensive review of US detainee policy as part of his order to close the controversial Guantanamo prison camp by January.

But in July, hundreds of prisoners led protests at Bagram fearing that they would be held indefinitely.

They refused to take part in video-telephone conversations, or accept visits by their relatives set out under an International Red Cross program.

Rights groups cautiously welcomed the decision to grant the inmates the right to contest their detentions.

"We're pleased that an additional review has now been set up because detainees of Bagram are detained for a long time without charges and any kind of review process," Human Rights Watch counterterrorism advisor Stacy Sullivan told AFP.

But she expressed skepticism that the review process would be efficient because a similar process was established at Guantanamo, where Sullivan said "it was basically used as a means to keep men in indefinite detention." She also urged the United States to provide lawyers to the detainees.

Amnesty International spokesman Geneve Mantri said Bagram has long posed a headache for Washington "because they really aren't sure exactly who they have there."

Last month, the civil liberties group ACLU protested the Pentagon and the CIA's refusal to supply the names, nationalities, place of arrests and details of those held in Bagram.

"None of the human rights group have ever had any access, even Afghan human rights groups were not allowed access," said Mantri.

Last month, a top US general called for as many as 400 of the 600 inmates to be released, saying they posed no threat to the United States.

There was little evidence against hundreds of detainees to justify their continued imprisonment, according to findings by Major General Douglas Stone, National Public Radio (NPR) reported, citing unnamed military officials.

In his report to the US Central Command, which oversees the region, Stone recommended that the US military abandon its detention program in Afghanistan within 12 to 18 months, NPR said.