US may move some Guantanamo inmates to Afghanistan - report
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-01-05 10:38

The United States wants to develop a high-security prison in Afghanistan to hold terrorism suspects, including some transferred from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the Financial Times said on Thursday.

The U.S. government has chosen the site of a former Soviet-era prison near the capital, Kabul, to house the prisoners, the British newspaper reported.

Some of the jail's facilities have already been refurbished as part of a European Union-financed criminal justice reform scheme backed by the United Nations, the paper said.

It was intended to be used for people convicted of drugs offences, the paper said.

The newspaper said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Afghanistan issued a public notice last month for the renovation and construction of a cell block at the complex.

The notice said the project would accommodate "detainees presently in sub-standard and/or overcrowded facilities."

The prison was notorious for the torture and execution of Islamists by former Communist-backed regimes in the 1980s.

Western diplomats say the United Nations and the European Union have been resisting Washington's proposals to set up the prison to hold Afghan suspects, the FT said. No explanation was given.

The United States has faced criticism at home and abroad for treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo and for holding prisoners indefinitely.

Only nine of about 500 prisoners being held at the base have been charged, and the United States has been holding prisoners there since January 2002.

After the September 11 attacks on the United States, the naval base was used to house prisoners captured mainly in Afghanistan.