Pakistani human rights group announces the transfer and says it is the largest number of Pakistanis US has released so far

The United States has quietly released 14 Pakistani citizens from military detention in Afghanistan, where the US holds its most secret cohort of detainees in its war on terrorism.

The US military transferred the 14 to Pakistani government custody on Saturday. It did not publicize the release, as is typical with releases from the detention center on the outskirts of Bagram Airfield which is known formally as the Detention Facility in Parwan.

A Pakistani human rights group instead announced the transfer and said it was the largest number of Pakistanis the US has thus far released.

None of the 14 Pakistanis was ever charged with a crime. The US has held them in wartime detention, though it has not picked up many – perhaps most – of the non-Afghan detainees it holds in Afghanistan in Afghanistan itself.

Unlike detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the Bagram non-Afghans – mostly Pakistanis, but also Yemenis, Tunisians, a Jordanian and a Russian – have no access to lawyers and judges, and have minimal ability to contest their detention. The US has never publicly named the non-Afghans it holds, let alone explained the circumstances of each man’s detention.

Saturday’s release was the latest in a series of recent transfers that have reduced the non-Afghan population held at Bagram. The Justice Project Pakistan, a human rights group that has pressed the Pentagon on a detention issue that remains obscure in the US, counted 39 Pakistanis released within the past 10 months, most recently with nine Pakistanis released last month. Two Yemenis detained at Bagram, Amin al-Bakri and Fadi al-Maqaleh, and a Kazakh, Farabi Ryskulov, were also released last month.

Army Lieutenant Colonel Myles Caggins, the Pentagon’s spokesman for detention issues, said the release was “not hasty” and was “part of our ongoing efforts to draw down all our facilities in Afghanistan”. Unless the next Afghan president signs a garrisoning agreement with the US, as President Obama and his Nato allies urge, all Nato militaries must withdraw from the country by the end of the year.

Caggins said there were now “less than 15” non-Afghans detained at Bagram. In August, after the Yemenis and the Kazakh were released, US officials told the Washington Post the US held 27 non-Afghans there; that would bring the detainee population down to 13 after Saturday’s transfer. The Justice Project Pakistan said it did not know the total.

Abdul Sattar, a Pakistani man recently released from Bagram detention, confirmed to the Guardian in July that non-Afghan detainees often go on hunger strike to protest their confinement and its terms. He estimated taking part in five or six hunger strikes in less than three years of detention.

While hunger strikes at Guantánamo Bay captured global attention in 2013, the overwhelming secrecy the US places around its non-Afghan Bagram detainees kept the hunger strikes there almost entirely invisible to the outside world, reducing pressure on the US government to address the detentions.

Caggins said the Pakistanis were held “within the laws of war” in “safe, humane detention”.

While the US has tacitly determined that any threat the men posed to the US has been trumped by other considerations, Caggins indicated that the military does not concede that the 14 Pakistanis never posed a threat to US security.

“In making a decision to transfer a detainee, we take into account the totality of relevant factors relating to the individual and the government that may receive him, including but not limited to any diplomatic assurances that have been provided,” Caggins said. “In this case the US government has worked closely with the government of Pakistan on the transfer.”

It is unknown how many of the 14 will be released to their families and how many, if any, will be continue to be held by Pakistan, or prosecuted.

In a statement Sarah Belal, the lead counsel for the Justice Project Pakistan, welcomed the release, but chided the Pakistani government over what she called a lack of transparency concerning Bagram releases.

“The families of the detainees were not informed of their repatriation or their whereabouts in Pakistan,” Belal said. “We still don’t know about the whereabouts of the nine detainees released last month. The lack of clarity with today’s tranche gives us reason to fear that they too may be held incommunicado by the Pakistani authorities.”