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A British court said Friday that suspected Taliban captives face the risk of mistreatment in a Kabul jail, but rejected an attempt to ban British troops from handing them over to Afghan security forces.

Anti-war activist Maya Evans asked the High Court to forbid British troops from transferring detainees to Afghanistan's National Directorate for Security. Her lawyers said prisoners had suffered abuse including beatings, electrocution and sleep deprivation.

Judges Stephen Richards and Ross Cranston rejected Evans' suit, but said an existing ban on sending prisoners to the directorate's Kabul facility should continue because "there is a real risk that detainees transferred to NDS Kabul will be subjected to torture or serious mistreatment."

They said prisoners could be sent to Afghan-run prisons in Kandahar and Lashkar Gah in southern Afghanistan as long as conditions were monitored.

The judges said isolated examples of abuse at those facilities "are possible, but the operation of the monitoring system - including observance of the specified conditions - will be sufficient to guard against abuse on such a scale as to give rise to a real risk of torture or serious mistreatment."

The judges called the ruling "a partial victory" for Evans, who said she was pleased with the outcome.

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