WASHINGTON — Hundreds of prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan will for the first time have the right to challenge their indefinite detention and call witnesses in their defense under a new review system being put in place this week, according to administration officials.
The 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 Barack 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 U.S. 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, north of Kabul, have refused visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross and have declined video teleconferences with their families.
The goal of the new procedures, the official said, is to create a “more robust” system that would “allow detainees to tell their story.”
Under the new rules, each detainee will be assigned a U.S. military official, not a lawyer, to represent his interests and examine evidence against him. 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 ordered held longer, the process will be repeated at six-month intervals.
The Bagram system is similar to the annual Administrative Review Boards used for terrorism suspects at the U.S. 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.
Human-rights organizations briefed by the Pentagon described the new system as a step in the right direction but inadequate.
