U.S. to Repatriate 110 Afghans Jailed at Guantanamo Bay

U.S. military officials will gradually hand over 110 Afghan prisoners to Afghanistan’s government in the largest repatriation of detainees from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since it was converted to a military prison for terrorism suspects three years ago, the Pentagon said Thursday.

In addition, U.S. authorities plan to turn over about 350 other Afghans who are in U.S. custody in Afghanistan after new prison space is built to accommodate them, officials said. Under a new agreement between the countries, Afghan authorities would then decide which prisoners to detain and which to release, Pentagon officials said.

The agreement will move the Bush administration a step closer to dealing with the troublesome diplomatic problems caused by the Guantanamo Bay prison.

The indefinite detentions of about 510 Guantanamo Bay prisoners are viewed in many parts of the world and by critics in the United States as human rights violations, and administration officials have debated whether to close the facility amid charges that detainees have been abused.

The agreement to release the Afghans also will help relieve domestic political pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whose fragile government has faced demonstrations and popular unrest on the issue. Karzai, a close U.S. ally, pressed President Bush during a visit to the United States in May to release more prisoners.

Most of the detainees in question were swept up by U.S. forces that invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to fight the Taliban government and its Al Qaeda allies. Four detainees held at the base have been charged with crimes under a controversial military commission system that has been challenged in U.S. courts.

Pentagon officials portrayed the repatriation as part of a long-term effort to turn over as many detainees as possible to their home countries.

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the agreement with Afghanistan reflected “ongoing efforts to transfer detainees to their home countries, as appropriate, and when we receive the assurances that the ... detainees do not pose a continuing threat.”

The U.S. military already has returned hundreds of Afghans taken prisoner in the region. U.S. officials have released or transferred more than 240 Guantanamo Bay detainees to about a dozen home countries. U.S. officials have acknowledged that a few of the released Afghans have rejoined the Taliban-led insurgency.

A senior defense official said Thursday’s announcement should not be seen as a sign that the Pentagon was going to return prisoners to their native countries either to be quickly released or to be tortured.

“We’re not cutting corners in terms of letting dangerous people go free,” the official said. “And we’re not cutting corners in terms of getting assurances from other countries that the prisoners will be treated humanely.”

The official said the transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities would happen when the Afghan government proved it was capable of handling a large detainee population.

“We’re not going to put them on a plane, drop them in Kabul, tell them ‘good luck,’ and send them on their way,” the official said. “That doesn’t serve our interests, and it doesn’t serve the interests of the Afghan government.”

In Kabul, a spokesman for Karzai, Karim Rahimi, told Associated Press that the returnees would include “all Afghan detainees that are with the U.S. forces.”

The 350 prisoners being held in Afghanistan are under U.S. control at Bagram air base, north of the capital Kabul.

Under the agreement, U.S. authorities will provide money to build new prison space in Afghanistan, and will train Afghan personnel to manage the facilities.

The announcement came after a meeting in Kabul between Karzai, Pierre-Richard Prosper, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes, and Matthew Waxman, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary for detainee affairs.

In his May visit, Karzai and Bush discussed violent demonstrations in Afghanistan over the detainees, and Karzai sought U.S. concessions on the issue.

U.S. officials had blamed the demonstrations on a magazine report that suggested U.S. military personnel had desecrated prisoners’ Korans. Although the report, in Newsweek, was retracted, an Army report in June documented several instances of Koran desecration.

Pentagon officials have said for some time that they want to increase the number of repatriations, but have been held back by a series of problems.

Some countries, such as Afghanistan, haven’t had the money or prison space to accommodate detainees. U.S. authorities have been unwilling to send prisoners back to other countries because, under the home countries’ laws, the detainees would be freed.

U.S. authorities were reluctant to repatriate others for fear that in their home countries they might be treated in ways that would be unacceptably harsh by U.S. standards.

Bush administration officials debated as recently as June whether to close the Guantanamo Bay prison as a way of relieving a public relations headache. Even Bush seemed to suggest at one point that closing it was a possibility.

But defenders of the current system, including Vice President Dick Cheney, convinced others in the administration that keeping Guantanamo Bay open was the best option.

They argued that the United States would need a substitute facility that would look much like Guantanamo Bay.

They also maintained that the detainees had yielded valuable intelligence information, and noted that U.S. taxpayers had paid about $300 million to build the prison.

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Times staff writer Mark Mazzetti in Washington contributed to this report.