US to extradite Afghans at Guantanamo Bay prison

Kabul, June 15 : The United States will soon extradite all 96 Afghans, including several senior Taliban officials, being held at its Guantanamo Bay prison camp for terrorist suspects, an Afghan government official said.

Some of the prisoners would be transferred immediately and the others would be sent back to Afghanistan later, said Abdul Jabar Sabit, an interior ministry official.

The prisoners were being extradited was part of an understanding reached between President George W Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai last year and would be tried by Afghan courts, Sabit said.

''All of the Afghan prisoners will be extradited in different batches,'' Sabit, who was member of an official delegation which recently visited Guantanamo Bay, told a news conference.

He said several senior Taliban officials, including a commerce minister in the radical Islamist regime overthrown in 2001, were among those being held in US prison in Cuba.

He did not give the name of the minister.

''Those who are innocent will be released and those who have committed crimes will be punished,'' he said.

US Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, eclined to confirm whether Afghan detainees would be released soon, saying, ''Due to security concerns, we do not discuss details of detainee movements until after completion of the movement.'' Gordon said that about 120 of the roughly 460 detainees at the prison in the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, have been deemed eligible to be transferred to the custody of another government or released.

Gordon noted that a maximum security cell block is being built in Afghanistan's Pol-e-Charkhi prison to receive detainees from Guantanamo, and that the facility is due to be completed in December.

Afghanistan has been undergoing its most serious spell of militant violence since the fall of the Taliban. More than 900 people have been killed this year, with more than 400 in May alone.

The US military opened Guantanamo as a prison camp for suspected Islamic militants in 2002, mostly suspected al Qaeda members captured in Afghanistan. The prison has drawn strong criticism from foreign governments and rights groups.

Facing indefinite detention, dozens of the detainees have gone on hunger strike and attempted suicide. Three prisoners hanged themselves on Saturday.

Many former Afghan and other inmates have complained of being mistreated, tortured physically and mentally by the military during their detentions.

Sabit said the Afghan delegation met with all 96 prisoners and found them living in ''humane'' conditions. He said only a few inmates complained about the treatment by US soldiers.

Reuters

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