[JURIST] The US Sunday released approximately 80 Afghan detainees from custody at Bagram airbase [GlobalSecurity.org backgrounder] north of Kabul and delivered them to the Afghan Supreme Court, where officials put them on buses home. The detainees were taken in after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. The US is currently holding about 500 Afghans at Bagram and at another US base in Kandahar; human rights groups have repeatly complained about US treatment of Afghan detainees [Human Rights Watch open letter to US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, December 2004] at those facilities. Pentagon officials have said that eight Afghan prisoners have died in US custody since 2002. BBC News has more.