U.S. General Begins Review of Afghan Jails

An American general has begun a wide-ranging review of a network of secretive U.S. jails scattered across Afghanistan, the military said Monday, adding to a clutch of investigations into alleged mistreatment that predates the scandal over abuse in Iraq.

A spokesman said Brig. Gen. Charles Jacoby started the review, which was announced last week, with visits to two bases in border areas dogged by militant attacks.

The military says Jacoby, the deputy operational commander at the main U.S. base at Bagram, north of Kabul, is to visit about 20 U.S. holding facilities around the country, including the principal jail at Bagram, “to ensure internationally accepted standards of handling detainees are being met.”

The spokesman declined to identify the first two bases visited but said they were in eastern Afghanistan.

The military recently announced two new criminal investigations into ex-inmates’ allegations of abuse -- including a former Afghan police colonel’s claim that he was beaten and sexually abused in mid-2003 before being released without charge.

But the Army’s criminal inquiries into the deaths of two Bagram inmates in December 2002 have been ongoing for more than a year. Both were ruled homicides after military autopsies and prompted undisclosed changes in prison procedures.

U.S.-led forces have detained hundreds in Afghanistan since ousting the Taliban in late 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden and other members of his Al Qaeda network.

The U.S. considers the detainees “unlawful combatants” not entitled to the full protection of the Geneva Convention, and many have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and held without trial or access to lawyers for more than two years.