US says no longer has any detainees in Afg

The US says it no longer holds any detainees in Afghanistan as a CIA torture report mentions a "black site" outside Bagram Air Base.

The US has pulled out of all prisons in Afghanistan and no longer holds any detainees, a US official says.

The announcement on Wednesday came just a day after the release of a searing Senate report on the brutal US treatment of "war on terror" detainees triggered worldwide condemnation, including from Afghanistan's new president, Ashraf Ghani.

A US official confirmed that after a careful review by the Pentagon and the State Department, the last "third-country nationals" in US custody in Afghanistan had been transferred, and the US military no longer operates any detention facilities there.

In March 2013, Afghan forces took full control from the US of the notorious Bagram prison, renamed Parwan, located on the sprawling US military air base. But the US had remained in charge of foreign prisoners.

One of the "black sites" mentioned in the Senate report, where measures such as "rectal feeding" were meted out, was a facility known as the "Salt Pit", located outside the Bagram Air Base.

US management of the Bagram jail, about 40 kilometres outside Kabul, had been especially controversial.

Rights groups have accused US authorities of carrying out prisoner abuse at the facility, and a US army report found that two inmates were beaten to death in 2002.


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