“There is not (a) legal basis for coalition forces to hold people as prisoners,” Bassiouni said.

KABUL, February 5 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – In less than 24 hours, two separate UN reports lambasted human rights abuses by the US-led forces in Afghanistan and in the notorious Guantanamo detention camp.

A UN rights investigator examining the situation in Afghanistan said Saturday, February 5, that foreign troops had mistreated and tortured people in the war-torn country, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“There is a very unusual practice in Afghanistan, mainly foreign forces, who have taken upon themselves the right, without any legal process of arresting people, detaining them, mistreating them and possibly even torturing them,” said Cherif Bassiouni, the UN-appointed Independent Expert on Human Rights in Afghanistan.

He would report the information to the next session of the UN's Human Rights Commission in March.

“There is not (a) legal basis for coalition forces to hold people as prisoners,” stressed the UN expert.

“If they're held as prisoners of war, then they have to observe the Geneva convention. If they're held as common prisoners, then they have to conform with Afghani law and constitution. They're (foreign forces) not doing it.”

 Bassiouni said it was a “matter of great concern” that an independent expert had been denied access to Bagram camp, 50 kilometers north of Kabul.

On a previous visit to Afghanistan in August 2004, the UN expert vocalized concerns about the legality of US-run detention centers and called for them to be opened to independent inspectors.

Top UN and Afghan rights officials said last month that war crimes suspects in Afghanistan must be prosecuted if stability is to be achieved.

The Human Rights Watch said in a recent report that the abuse of Afghan detainees by the US forces was “systematic” and not limited to a few cases.

The New York Times also carried a testimony of a former Afghan police colonel who accused the American troops of torturing and sexually abusing him while in several US-run detention centers across Afghanistan.

The 18,000-strong US-led forces, including 16,000 American soldiers, have been deployed in Afghanistan since 2001.

Too Little

In another damning report, UN human rights investigators on Friday, February 4, accused Washington of doing too little to improve treatment of prisoners at its Guantanamo detention camp, reported Reuters.

In a joint statement, they underlined the need to “objectively assess the allegations of torture, and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, particularly in relation to methods of interrogation of detainees”.

The UN experts also warned that the countries’ right to defend their citizens must be carried out “in conformity with international law, lest the whole cause of the international fight against terrorism be compromised.”

Some 558 prisoners have been held virtually incommunicado at the remote base on the southeastern tip of Cuba since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan without charge or access to attorneys.

The UN investigators said the legal basis for the prisoners' continued detention remained unclear, and that even the exact number and names of those detained was unknown.

Recent moves, including the "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" created by the Pentagon last year following a Supreme Court rebuke and the release of four Britons and an Australian held as terrorism suspects, were “insufficient to dispel the serious concerns” over conditions in the detention camp, they added.

A US District judge ruled on Monday that the "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" still violated the prisoners' constitutional rights because they did not have access to lawyers or secret evidence, including evidence that may have been obtained through torture or coercion.

The New York Times revealed October 17 that uncooperative detainees in Guantanamo were regularly tortured by US guards.

Twenty-three Guantanamo detainees carried out a coordinated attempt to kill themselves in 2003, the US military has admitted.

In August, Briton Martin Malaga unveiled the ill-treatment  of prisoners at the infamous camp, accusing his US jailers of sexual assault and physical violence in his 8ft-by-6ft cell.

In a July letter to Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the Army's provost marshal, FBI counterterrorism official Thomas Harrington confirmed that FBI agents saw military interrogators use abusive tactics on prisoners at Guantanamo.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has accused the United States of committing “war crimes” in Guantanamo.