WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- The U.S. military holds some 500 terror suspects at a prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, indefinitely and without charges, The New York Times reported Sunday.

    The military has quietly expanded the less-visible prison, where terror suspects are held in more primitive conditions, compared with the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has sparked an international debate over its future, the report said.

    Some of the detainees have been held at Bagram, some 60 km north of the Afghan capital of Kabul, for as long as two or three years, and unlike those at Guantanamo, they have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants," military officials were quoted as saying.

    The report said Pentagon officials have often described the detention center at an American air base at Bagram as a screening center, and that they said most of the detainees were Afghans who might eventually be released under an amnesty program or transferred to an Afghan prison that is to be built with American aid.

    While Guantanamo offers carefully scripted tours for members of Congress and journalists, Bagram has operated in rigorous secrecy since it opened in 2002. It bars outside visitors except for the International Red Cross and refuses to make public the names of those held there. The prison may not be photographed, even from a distance, the report said.

    Citing accounts of former detainees, military officials and soldiers who served there, the report said the prison at Bagram is in many ways rougher and more bleak than its counterpart in Guantanamo. Men are held by the dozen in large wire cages, sleeping on the floor on foam mats, and until about a year ago, often used plastics buckets for latrines, according to the report. Enditem