NATO is to hand over control of the prison at Bagram airbase near Kabul to Afghan authorities, the country's defence ministry said on Saturday, following criticism of the facility by human rights groups.
An agreement on the handover was signed on Saturday between the Afghan government and NATO's International Security Assistance Force, the ministry said.
"This is an important step towards the extension of Afghan national sovereignty," the ministry said. It added that the date for the handover had still to be agreed.
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The detention centre at Bagram is a new facility officially named the Parwan Detention Centre after the province where it is located.
It was opened in November to replace the previous Bagram prison, which held some 650 "enemy combatants".
Human rights campaigners have criticised a facility that they say, while new, fails to comply with international norms as some inmates are victims of arbitrary detention, having no recourse to justice or knowledge of the charges against them.
Bagram prison gained a sinister reputation starting in December 2002, when two inmates died one week apart. They were officially said to have died of natural causes but an enquiry later revealed that they had been beaten, deprived of sleep and kept constantly chained.
Karzai presents next attempt at a Cabinet
Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's new cabinet nominees were presented to parliament on Saturday in his second attempt to form a functioning government and end a drawn-out political crisis.
Karzai last week ordered parliament to cancel its winter recess to consider new nominations for cabinet posts after it threw out most of his original choices.
The new list includes three women - nominated for the women's affairs, public health, and social affairs portfolios. The only woman on the original list, incumbent women's affairs minister Husn Banu Ghazanfar, was rejected.
Two posts not nominated Saturday - the powerful water and power, and telecommunications positions - would be presented in coming days, Second Vice President Mohammad Karim Khalili said.
Current water and energy minister Ismail Khan was rejected by parliament in a move seen by observers as a rejection of Karzai's past practice of surrounding himself with warlords as reward for their support.
Last week's rejections have effectively left Afghanistan without a fully functioning government, dragging out a political vacuum that has prevailed since an August presidential election.
