ICRC welcomes Pentagon plan to review Afghan detainees

GENEVA (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Tuesday welcomed a Pentagon plan to regularly review the detention of prisoners at a U.S.-run air base in Afghanistan.

Patrick Hamilton, deputy head of the ICRC's delegation in Afghanistan, said the neutral humanitarian agency hoped to soon resume its own visits of Bagram detainees.

In a Reuters interview, the Pashtun-speaking Scot said there were "encouraging signs," especially since General Stanley McChrystal took command of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan in June, announcing that protecting Afghans was a priority.

"We do sense that there is a greater engagement and that the issue is being taken more seriously and that steps are being taken," Hamilton said.

"There has been an improving dialogue on those issues ... There have been issues on both sides with behavior that has been occasionally indiscriminate and disproportionate," he said, referring to attacks by both U.S. and Taliban forces.

The Pentagon said on Monday that some 600 Afghan prisoners at the Bagram base north of Kabul would have "the opportunity to contest their detentions" every six months and allow the U.S. military to assess "whether or not they warrant being held."

"We will be monitoring those changes for the months to come with obviously some great interest," Hamilton said at the ICRC's headquarters as he ends an 8-year stint in Afghanistan.

The Bagram facility has housed suspected Taliban since U.S. and Afghan forces overthrew the militants' government in late 2001 after the deadly September 11 attacks on America.

Critics say their detention without access to courts, defense lawyers or family violates Afghan and international law.

ICRC officials have inspected conditions at Bagram for the past eight years, submitting their confidential findings to U.S. authorities. "As far as we are aware we are being notified of all people that the U.S. is holding at Bagram," Hamilton said.

Two prisoners died at the prison in 2002 after being beaten by American soldiers and human rights advocates say detainees have been staging protests there over their conditions.

The ICRC, which deploys some 1,450 people in Afghanistan, has been forced to suspend its prison visits to Bagram since mid-July due to the detainees' "strike."

(Editing by Laura MacInnis)