U.S. to keep control of Afghan prison, missing milestone in handover
The United States will remain in control of Afghanistan’s highest-profile prison well beyond January 2012, missing a key milestone in the plan to transfer judicial and detention operations to Afghans, U.S. military officials say.
U.S. officials decided that the Afghan legal system is still too weak to permit the hand-over of the Parwan Detention Center, according to The Washington Post, even after the United States spent millions attempting to improve the country’s judiciary. The United States will now be unable to relinquish authority at Parwan until at least 2014, just as the last foreign troops are scheduled to leave Afghanistan.
Problems with the Afghan legal system include an antiquated penal code, corrupt provincial courts and the inability of judges to handle classified evidence. U.S. officials say that giving Afghans control over the fates of suspected insurgents would allow dangerous Taliban fighters to slip through the cracks.
The U.S. earlier decided it would be unable to meet a January 2011 deadline to turn over detention operations at the Parwan facility to the Afghans.
