The U.S. military has agreed for the first time to provide information to the International Committee of the Red Cross about prisoners held in secret detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it will continue to deny the organization access to them, military officials said Saturday.
The facilities are "short-term places" operated by U.S. Special Forces for newly captured suspected insurgents considered to have valuable information or to be serious threats, according to an official familiar with the subject who was not authorized to discuss it on the record. It is usually in "the early hours" of detention that interrogators "are able to gain the freshest and most valuable intelligence," the official said.
The military's agreement early this month to provide the Red Cross with at least the names of detainees in the Iraq and Afghanistan camps was first reported Saturday on the New York Times' website.
The Red Cross has long requested information about, and access to, such prisoners held at the U.S. military base at Bagram, Afghanistan, and in Balad, Iraq. Only a few dozen detainees are believed to be in each location at any time, usually for several weeks until they are transferred to longer-term prisons.
