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By Hamid Shalizi
KABUL, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered an investigation into the killing of an Afghan detainee held by NATO-led troops in a Taliban stronghold in the volatile south of the country, his office said on Tuesday.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Monday that a man who was captured during a military operation in Kandahar province on Saturday had been found dead in his holding cell the next day.
ISAF reiterated on Tuesday that its own investigation was under way and did not give any further details other than to say the man had "been found dead in his cell".
Prisoner abuse and deaths of detainees while in the custody of foreign troops are sensitive subjects for many Afghans after U.S. troops beat to death two prisoners in 2002 at the old Bagram prison in U.S. Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.
On Tuesday, a statement released by Karzai's palace said coalition forces had entered the prison in the Arghandab district of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, on Sunday night and killed the detainee, who it named as Mullah Mohebullah.
The statement also used a word that can be translated from Afghanistan's Dari language into English as meaning "killed" or "murdered".
Violence is at its worst across Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, with military and civilian casualties at record levels despite the presence of almost 150,000 foreign troops.
Foreign troops have been making painstaking progress during a series of offensives launched in the south over the past 16 months in an attempt to turn the tide against the Taliban-led insurgency.
Thousands of mainly U.S. troops began a new offensive earlier this month around the provincial capital of Kandahar.
But civilian casualties and the deaths of detainees in the custody of foreign troops are a major source of friction between Karzai's government and Washington, where a review of the Afghanistan war strategy will be conducted in December.
DETAINEES REPORT ABUSE
The old Bagram jail, which was set up to hold prisoners from the campaign against the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, was replaced earlier this year by a $60 million prison -- also on Bagram Air Base -- which Washington says meets international standards.
On Saturday, a report by U.S.-based think-tank Open Society Foundations said former detainees held at a secret U.S. prison at Bagram, separate to the main jail, had reported abuse at the hands of the U.S. military. [ID:SGE69D0FR]
In the report, former detainees said jailers mistreated them by depriving them of natural light, failing to provide proper food and withholding Red Cross visits.
A spokeswoman for U.S. military detention operations said the International Committee of the Red Cross was aware of the temporary holding centres it operates and that all treatment complied with international and U.S. laws.
Apart from Bagram prison, there are smaller jails on foreign military bases around Afghanistan where detainees are held before they are taken to Bagram or handed over to Afghan authorities.
Earlier this year, there were around 1,000 prisoners held in foreign military detention centres in Afghanistan, more than 800 of them in the main jail at Bagram.
Only recently have Afghan prisoners begun appearing before local judges and lawyers at Bagram jail, which the U.S. military says it is to start gradually handing over to the Afghans.
(Additional reporting by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Paul Tait and David Fox; hamid.shalizi@thomsonreuters.com; +93 799 390 693) (For more Reuters coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan, see: http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/afghanistanpakistan) (If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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