The AP’s Brian Murphy reports that “[j]ailed fighters of the fallen Taliban shout the name of their former foe, but no longer in anger. ‘We want to go to an American prison,’ many plead.

Anything, they say, to leave Shibergan prison in northern Afghanistan, now jammed to more than 10 times its capacity with about 3,500 men. But unlike the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, this has been a prison largely out of the spotlight.”

‘From region to region, there are different ways Afghan authorities are dealing with Taliban prisoners,’ said Samuel Emonet, who heads the Red Cross team inspecting detention facilities in the region. ‘Shibergan stands out because of its size and the uncertainty of what will happen to the prisoners.’

The prison about 75 miles west of Mazar-e-Sharif is controlled by the forces of Gen. Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek who rules much of northern Afghanistan. He and other militia leaders are under international pressure to help build a credible central authority in Kabul.

But Dostum still apparently answers to no one about many aspects of his fiefdom.

Prison doctors have begged for medicine from Dostum’s military hospital in Shibergan. Only a few boxes of antibiotics and rehydration salts have been sent to Shibergan, one of the largest detention camps in the country.

An official at the hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity, said supplies are critically low and there is little money to buy more. ‘The Taliban prisoners are not a priority,’ he said.

Why isn’t the European press loudly condemning such atrocities from the metaphorical rooftops? Or their actual rooftops, for that matter? Where’s the outrage?

Somebody owes Rumsfeld an apology…

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