US military hands over controversial prison

US officials have handed over formal control of Afghanistan’s only large-scale US-run prison to Kabul, even as a row between the two countries over thousands of Taliban and terror suspects held there marred the transfer.

The handover ceremony took place at the prison next to a sprawling US airfield in Bagram, just north of Kabul. President Hamid Karzai has called the transfer a victory for Afghan sovereignty.

The prison has been the focus of controversy in the past but never had the notoriety of the prisons at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or Abu Ghraib in Iraq.