WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Prisoners held at a U.S. base in Afghanistan will have their detention reviewed roughly every six months, officials said, part of efforts by the Pentagon to improve the image of its forces in the country.

The new policy will apply to some 600 Afghans held at a prison at the Bagram air base north of Kabul.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said detainees would be assigned personal representatives drawn from U.S. military ranks on the base to “guide them through the review process” and help gather witness statements that could be used to challenge their imprisonment.

The prison has housed suspected Taliban members since U.S. and Afghan forces overthrew the militants’ government in 2001 after the September 11 attacks.

Two prisoners died at the prison in 2002 after being beaten by American soldiers, and human rights advocates say prisoners have been staging protests there for the past few months over the conditions of their detention.

Critics say the U.S. detention of prisoners at Bagram without access to courts, defence lawyers or family members was against Afghan and international laws.

Whitman said military-appointed detention review boards would give prisoners at the base “the opportunity to contest their detentions” as well as allow the U.S. military to assess “whether or not they warrant being held.”

“The concept is to have somebody … have their case reviewed within 60 days of being detained and to have it re-reviewed roughly every six months or so,” Whitman said.

The personal representatives assigned to the detainees would not be lawyers.

“This is not an adjudication of criminal charges,” Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said. “These are fighters picked up on the battlefield and detained.”

“But we found it is helpful to have some sort of review process so they have a better understanding about why they’re being held and an opportunity to provide witnesses or evidence” to make the case for their release, he added.

The new policy was first reported in the U.S. media over the weekend, but the Pentagon gave further details on Monday.

Whitman said the new review process was “consistent” with the counter-insurgency strategy put in place by the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, aimed at garnering public support from the Afghan public and undercutting gains by the Taliban.

“You don’t want to be holding people any longer than you need to be holding them and, occasionally, there are people who get caught up in the fight and want to contest their detention,” Whitman said.

The Pentagon did not say how soon the new policy would be carried out in full. “We’re just in the process of implementing this,” Whitman said.

He said the procedures were similar to those in Iraq, which he said had helped reduce the prison population and “ensure that we were only holding the most dangerous individuals.”

The shift has been welcomed by the Afghan Commission for Human Rights, which has been pushing for years for the detainees to have access to lawyers.

The U.S. government is building a new facility at Bagram to replace the existing makeshift prison. The new prison should be opened in the next few months.

(Reporting by Adam Entous; Editing by David Storey)

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