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US govt extends Afghanistan prison rights: report
2009-09-13
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The administration of US President Barack Obama plans to issue new guidelines designed to give prisoners at a US detention center in Afghanistan more ability to challenge their custody, The New York Times reported late Saturday. Citing unnamed Pentagon officials, the newspaper said the new guidelines would assign a US military official to each of the roughly 600 detainees at the US-run prison at the Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. These officials would not be lawyers but could for the first time gather witnesses and evidence on behalf of the detainees to challenge their detention in proceedings before a military-appointed review board, the report said. Some of the detainees have already been held at Bagram for six years, the paper noted. But unlike the prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, these detainees have had no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants." The changes are expected to be announced this week after an obligatory congressional review, The Times said.
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