US to prosecute CIA contractor over prisoner killing in Afghanistan
Afghan President Hamid Karzai's chief-of-staff, Mohammed Omar Daudzai, also said the government is confident that Washington will pursue other offenders.
US authorities yesterday charged David Passaro with two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and two counts of assault resulting in serious bodily injury over the death of detainee Abdul Wali. Passaro is accused of having beaten Wali in June 2003 at a camp in Asadabad, some 190 kilometres northeast of Kabul. He faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and a $250,000-dollar fine.
It is the first such case brought against a civilian in the wake of the US prisoner abuse scandals in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Human rights groups have raised concerns about the number of secret jails in Afghanistan.
New York-based Human Rights First claims there are seven undisclosed centres in Afghanistan, including a CIA interrogation facility in the capital, Kabul, known as 'The Pit'.
In a report released this week, it said the United States was holding suspects in the war on terror in more than two dozen prisons around the world, with the biggest number of secret prisons in Afghanistan.
Secrecy surrounding the jails made "inappropriate detention and abuse not only likely, but inevitable", the group said.
The US military has confirmed the existence of only two detention facilities in Afghanistan Bagram Collection Point at the main US airbase north of Kabul and "one transitional collection point" in southern Kandahar.
"We also have about 18 transit holding sites," a spokeswoman for the US-led coalition Master Sergeant Cindy Beam said.
"Where ever we have troops engaged in combat operations, we may get detainees. Therefore we have transit holding sites to confine the detainees until we can get them from the combat location to Bagram or Kandahar."
The US has refused to confirm or deny the report on secret detention cells.
"We don't talk about where each holding site is because it gives our enemy too much information about where we are and what we're doing," Ms Beam said.
But security sources have confirmed that the secret prisons exist in Afghanistan.
They said some detainees have been held in these secret jails since the fall of the Taliban regime more than two years ago.
The CIA, in collaboration with the Afghan secret service, runs at least five clandestine jails in Kabul, western and Afghan sources said.
Managed on a daily basis by members of the Afghan National Directorate of Security, these cells hold about 20 foreigners believed to be involved with al-Qaida, sources say. Most are Arabs from the Middle East and North Africa.
American personnel working in these centres don't wear military uniforms, and drive around in unmarked vehicles. The prisoners are held outside any legal framework and are regularly moved from one prison to another.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which visits prisoners at Bagram and has recently been given access to Kandahar, says it is concerned by the unknown number of people detained "in secret places" by American forces.
Some 2,000 prisoners have been detained in Afghanistan since the start of the war on terror. Many have been released or forwarded to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, while about 390 are in custody in Afghanistan.
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