British lawyers demand access to detainees in Afghanistan

LONDON -- British lawyers representing eight Afghan prisoners at Camp Bastion, Britain’s largest military base in Afghanistan, told the British Broadcasting Corp. on Wednesday that their clients had been held without trial and denied access to a lawyer, some for as many as 14 months.

Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers is turning to British courts to press the Defense Ministry to release the men or explain why they were being detained in a legal limbo.

He called the Camp Bastion center a “secret facility” in “flagrant breach of common and international law.”

As many as 90 detainees are being held there awaiting transfer to the Afghan judicial system under suspicion of killing or plotting attacks on British and allied troops. Since November, the Defense Ministry has halted transfers of prisoners to the Afghan judiciary what the ministry said Wednesday was “evidence that suggested a risk of mistreatment of detainees.”

Richard Stein, a human rights lawyer defending a detainee, told the BBC he had been denied even phone access to his client “despite repeated efforts.”

“We recognize the risk to British forces but it can’t be a justification to detain people unlawfully.”

Shiner told the BBC the Defense Ministry had finally granted him access to two clients.

He acknowledged the British government faced a dilemma: it has no legal internment powers in Afghanistan but officials do not feel they can transfer suspects to the Afghan legal system while it is suspected of using torture. But, he said, Britain “could have trained the Afghan authorities to detain people lawfully and make sure they are treated humanely. They could have monitored that facility with ad hoc inspections to make sure that the Afghans were obeying the law. They have chosen not to do so.”

In response, Philip Hammond, Britain’s secretary of state for defense, said Wednesday that calling the Camp Bastion detention center a secret facility was “patently ridiculous.”

“Parliament has been informed about our detention activities ... [which are] a vital part of our forces’ protection,” he told the BBC.

The approximately 90 detainees are “suspected of murdering British troops or being involved in IEDs,” or improvised explosive devices, he said. Their lawyers were asking the government “to release these people ... so they can carry on with the activities for which they were detained in the first place, putting British and other [coalition] troops at risk.”

The government has been working “with the Afghans and other allies to develop a safe pathway for the transfer of these detainees into the judicial system,” Hammond said. “I am hoping in the very near future, within a matter of days, we will be able to restart transfers through a safe route into the Afghan system.”

A Defense Ministry spokesman’s statement further clarified that “successive governments have reported to Parliament on detention operations in Afghanistan. ... Defense Secretary Philip Hammond updated the House [of Commons] in December 2012 on this issue.”

NATO guidelines for the International Security Assistance Force place a limit of a 96-hour detention period for suspects before transfer to the Afghan judicial system, with extensions granted in exceptional circumstances and in the interests of protecting allied troops.

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