ISLAMABAD, July 11: The public affairs wing of the US forces based at the Bagram base in Afghanistan has denied that any woman prisoner is detained at their bases.

“There are no women in our custody,” said Lt-Col Rumi Nielson-Green, Director of Public Affairs, Regional Command East and Combined Joint Task Force.

He was responding to a press conference held recently by Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf in Islamabad at which Yvonne Ridley, a well-known journalist and former Taliban captive, had appealed for help for a Pakistani woman she believed was being held in Bagram base over the past four years.

Corresponding through an email, Lt-Col Nielson-Green claimed that the US valued human rights and that their detention operations complied with American laws and Geneva Convention requirements in their treatment of detainees.

He said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) made regular visits to the facilities and detainees to make observations and recommendations to improve conditions.

When he was asked if any woman had been held from 2002 onwards or if there were women in other detention facilities in Afghanistan, he said: “I will have to refer you to the US department of defence for any historical questions or perhaps to the ICRC.”

He did not respond to a request to check prisoner records and identify ‘Prisoner 650’ -- believed to be the prisoner number of the woman being detained in Bagram.

Knowledgeable circles think that the woman mentioned by Ms Ridley could be Aafia Siddiqui, believed to have been picked up along with her three children by Pakistani intelligence agencies and handed over to US authorities for interrogation.

The ICRC’s Kabul office did not reply to queries about woman prisoners being kept by the US in Afghanistan.

Cage Prisoners, a UK-based humanitarian organisation, has been able to confirm independently from ICRC staff assigned to Bagram during 2004/5 that a woman prisoner had been held for some time there and that they had met her. According to Cage Prisoners, this prisoner may have been Ms Siddiqui.