The Pentagon has denied allegations collected by the BBC from former inmates of the Bagram Theater Interment Facility that they were tortured while detained on the US airbase. The problem is that thanks to the enormities of Abu Ghraib, few are going to believe the American military.

The British broadcasters interviewed 27 former Bagram inmates, all of whom had been detained between 2002 and 2008 on suspicion of being Taleban or Al-Qaeda fighters and later released, some of them with an apology. Just two of the men said that they had been well treated. The rest alleged abuse similar to that proven to have taken place in Iraq. They had, they said, been forced into stress positions, exposed to excessive heat and cold, been bombarded with unbearably loud music and obliged to take their clothes off in front of female US soldiers. A few said that a gun had been pressed against their heads.

In its denial, the Pentagon maintained that where serious abuse had been alleged, inquiries had been followed by prosecutions. Nevertheless, the majority of the 16 trials that has taken place has resulted in acquittals.

One of the principles on which President Obama was clearest in his campaign for the White House was that his administration would not tolerate torture and would close down Guantanamo Bay. The Gitmo closure process, though under way has already seen Obama forced to make compromises, for instance over the continued use of military tribunals but with an improved, though some would argue still inadequate level of rights and legal representation for the accused. Other alleged terrorists are to be tried in US mainland courts.

But while the Obama administration may have moved against the legal black hole of Gitmo, it has turned its face against applying the same clarity to Bagram, arguing that granting legal rights to these detainees would harm the president’s ability to succeed in the battle against the insurgents and put US forces at risk.

Unfortunately, this sounds very similar to the Bush doctrine of detaining “illegal combatants”, which in his administration’s blinkered view justified them being robbed of their legal rights. By accepting something very like the same principle, Obama is, in fact, undermining the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, which he says he is trying to protest. It does not matter that many of the Bagram detainees may be highly dangerous people, who if they were the captors and not the captives, would perhaps show very little mercy at all to their prisoners. The US is seeking to help build a just society in Afghanistan by challenging and defeating extremism. It cannot, therefore, use as one of its tools in this task, the unjust and extreme treatment of detainees.

Obama must prove that abuses have stopped, investigate allegations of past wrongs and accord the Bagram detainees proper legal status. Liberal lawyers will of course cash in and the Taleban and Al-Qaeda will try to exploit the situation. However, the eyes of a Muslim world that has not forgotten Abu Ghraib are now on the US president.