Over the weekend, news reports revealed that terror suspects are being held in a secret part of the prison at that Bagram air base for interrogation. They’re denied access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and some have claimed they’ve been subjected to abuses, including sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and other maltreatment similar to the sorts of interrogation abuses that occurred during the Bush administration.

Human Rights First is now calling for a full investigation of the so-called “black prison” at Bagram and the alleged abuses there.

“These allegations raise serious questions about whether reforms initiated by the Obama administration are being properly implemented and about whether they are sufficient to end torture and detainee abuse,” the organization wrote in a letter sent yesterday to Afghanistan Commander Vice-Admiral Robert Harward. “If substantiated, the alleged conduct of detaining authorities is in violation of U.S. law, including the Detainee Treatment Act, and the 2006 Army Field Manual, which is applicable to all U.S. government agencies. It is also in violation of international law, including Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention against Torture.”

The letter asks that the results of the investigation be made public and that the perpetrators of abuses be held accountable.

In its document, the government argues that these documents are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act because they would reveal “intelligence sources and methods,” notwithstanding that the Obama administration has said it’s no longer using those abusive methods.

In that regard, it’s much like the Justice Department’s argument that courts must dismiss lawsuits that claim the government engaged in torture or warrantless wiretapping, because they would reveal “state secrets” — even though, supposedly, the government doesn’t do those secretive things anymore.

Advocates for accountability, at least, might find a silver lining here. The government’s insistence on keeping the evidence secret would seem to provide a strong argument for why Congress and Attorney General Eric Holder ought to conduct their own aggressive investigation.

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One jail was a renovated building on a busy street in Bucharest, Romania, the officials disclosed. Another was a steel-beam structure at a remote site in Morocco that was apparently never used. The third, another remodeling project, was outside another former Eastern bloc city. They were designed to appear identical, so prisoners would be disoriented and not know where they were if they were shuttled back and forth. They were kept in isolated cells. [...]

Eventually, the agency’s network would encompass at least eight detention centers, including one in the Middle East, one each in Iraq and Afghanistan and a maximum-security long-term site at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that was dubbed Strawberry Fields, officials said. (It was named after a Beatles song after C.I.A. officials joked that the detainees would be held there, as the lyric put it, “forever.”)

The C.I.A. has never officially disclosed the exact number of prisoners it once held, but top officials have put the figure at fewer than 100.

Also of note, The Times sheds some light on what life was like inside the prisons:

[T]he jails were small, and though they were built to house about a half-dozen detainees they rarely held more than four.

The cells were constructed with special features to prevent injury to the prisoners during interrogations: nonslip floors and flexible, plywood-covered walls to soften the impact of being slammed into the wall.

The detainees, held in cells far enough apart to prevent communication with one another, were kept in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. For their one hour of daily exercise, they were taken out of their cells by C.I.A. security officers wearing black ski masks to hide their identities and to intimidate the detainees, according to the intelligence officials.

Just like prisons in the United States, the jailers imposed a reward and punishment system: well-behaved detainees received books, DVDs and other forms of entertainment, which were taken away if they misbehaved, the officials said.

And the CIA operative charged with overseeing the creation of the network of secret jails: Kyle “Dusty” Foggo — whose name you may have heard before.

“If there is a reason to file a complaint against these people, it should be done before local courts with jurisdiction, in other words in the United States,” Conde-Pumpio said in a breakfast meeting with journalists, according to The Associated Press.

Spain could have exercised what’s known as “universal jurisdiction” over the case, but the government was apparently reluctant to do that and risk tensions with the United States.

The possibility of charges, which we’ve reported here, began when human rights lawyers asked Judge Baltasar Garzon, famous for indicting ex-Chilean ruler Augusto Pinochet in 1998, to consider the case. Following Spanish law, the judge then asked prosecutors to recommend whether to pursue the case.

While the case may not move forward in Spain, back in the United States, the memos drafted by some of the same lawyers under scrutiny by Judge Garzon are expected to be released today in a pending court case. The memos reportedly provide the legal justification for the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation techniques that included the CIA’s torture of detainees in secret prisons as part of the “war on terror”. The memos could be used as evidence in any future prosecution of former Bush officials initiated in the United States.