Video link for US Afghan inmates

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Families have been desperate for news of the prisonersPrisoners at a US jail near the Afghan capital, Kabul, have been able to communicate via video link with their families for the first time.

About 60 detainees at the Bagram base have spoken to relatives so far via the facility, set up by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Bagram currently holds more than 600 men detained by US forces on suspicion of links to terrorist activity.

The jail was set up after US-led forces ousted the Taleban in late 2001.

Presumed dead

The ICRC has visited inmates inside Bagram since 2002. It does not publish reports on conditions inside.

It was set up basically to reassure detainees and their families Reto Stocker, ICRC in Kabul

It says it has worked for years to get permission to establish the video link.

The son of one of the detainees, Sayed Noor Ahmad, said speaking to his father had been a very moving experience.

"We thought that our father was not alive, we did not have any hope of seeing him again," he said.

"Now the ICRC has restored our hopes and we are hoping that he will be freed with Allah's help."

A spokesperson for the ICRC, Graziella Leite, said: "We believe it is joyful moment for the families to be able to see and talk to their loved ones.

She said many families had not seen their relatives for some time.

"It is the first type of what we could call family contact of this kind."

The ICRC says some 60 families have so far visited a call centre set up in its office in Kabul to talk to their loved ones by video link.

'Cages'

The Bagram base, situated around 40km (25 miles) north of Kabul, was originally built by the Soviet military during its invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Bagram serves as a military base, airfield and detention centre

It is now the main base for the US-led coalition force which ousted Afghanistan's Taleban rulers after the attacks on the US of 11 September, 2001.

Bagram houses the main prison facility for people detained by US forces across the country.

People detained at Bagram are mostly held in an anonymous-looking building deep in the heart of the base, correspondents say.

Those who have been inside describe it as being divided up into cages in some areas, with walled-off rooms in others.

The ICRC has long lobbied for family visits to inmates at Bagram and at another US detention facility, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

As well as housing people detained inside Afghanistan, Bagram is thought to contain a number of suspects transferred from around the world - a controversial process known as "rendition".