US Still Holding Terror Suspects in Secret Jails

Suspects held up to nine weeks, say sources
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 8, 2011 8:39 AM CDT
US Still Holding Terror Suspects in Secret Jails
In this March 23, 2011 photograph, Afghan detainees are through mesh wire fence inside the Parwan detention facility near Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan.   (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)

The US military is still detaining terror suspects in a network of around 20 secret prisons spread throughout Afghanistan, interrogating them without charge for weeks at a time, sources tell the AP. For a long time the Pentagon denied the existence of such facilities, even in the face of descriptions of them from ex-detainees and human rights groups. Then government officials confirmed their existence, but insisted they were temporary holding facilities, keeping prisoners no more than 14 days.

But now, officials speaking anonymously reveal that detainees have actually been held up to nine weeks, depending on the value of the information they provide. Though the harshest of the Bush-era interrogation tactics, like waterboarding, have been abandoned, human rights activists say detainee treatment in the prisons borders on inhumane. "They were forced to strip naked in front of other detainees," says one Human Rights First representative. "The forced nudity seems to be part of a pattern to make detainees feel disempowered." Click to read the full story. (More Afghanistan stories.)

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