SHIBERGHAN, Afghanistan -- It was once compared to Auschwitz, but conditions have improved at the notorious prison in northern Afghanistan housing more than 1,200 former Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters.

Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, under Western pressure and helped by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), has eased the misery of captives at Shiberghan jail who have languished there since the fall of the Taleban last year.

On a recent visit, a Reuters team saw Afghan and Pakistani inmates crammed in the jail 20 to a cell, many still sleeping on bare stone floors and more than a dozen suffering from tuberculosis in a special ward.

But there was none of the severe malnutrition that shocked visiting EU Ambassador Klaus-Peter Klaiber in May into comparing conditions with the infamous Nazi death camp of Auschwitz.

Aid workers say that comparison may have been exaggerated, but conditions were appalling when the prison was first filled with fighters captured during the fall of Kunduz and the north.

In the chaos that followed, prisoners were transported to the jail inside containers. General Jorabeg Muradi admits 90 to 100 died of injuries and suffocation on the journey, but independent sources say the actual number of dead could have been twice that.

In the early post-Taleban days prison guards were not paid, and many survived by stealing food the prisoners were given.

Today authorities proudly parade a whitewashed medical clinic and the kitchen where huge vats of food are prepared -- although much of the credit for the improvements goes to the ICRC.

The red cross was forced to set up a feeding center in April and May to wean hundreds of inmates back from the brink of starvation. It also dug a well and reconstructed the clinic.

Prison authorities say more than 3,000 inmates -- mostly the very young, old and sick -- have been released this year, easing acute overcrowding which was a major problem in the early months.

Even now, the ICRC is still forced to supplement the meagre rations provided by Dostum's men.

--- Tuberculosis a Concern --- Tuberculosis is a major concern -- the disease spreads fast in the crowded conditions of a jail and inadequate treatment produces drug resistant strains which are impossible to cure.

Crammed against the bars of their prison blocks, under the watchful eye of the guards, prisoners claim they were merely Taleban foot soldiers. Some say they did not fight at all.

No one wanted to publicly declare support for Osama bin Laden or the attacks on the United States on September 11 last year, but there was little repentance among the Pakistanis at least. "Since we are Muslims we have got ideologies," said 23-year-old Ghulab Rahman, a black-bearded Pakistani Pashtun from the Afghan border area. "We came to Afghanistan to serve the Islamic regime. It was the duty of all Muslims to fight." "We are happy as we were jailed for doing a virtuous thing," said Karamullah Shah from Baluchistan in Pakistan. "We haven't done anything wrong, we are still committed to our ideology."

Jorabeg says U.S. investigators took away around 160 people after the fall of Kunduz, leaving the rest to Dostum.

He divides prisoners into two groups -- "hardliners" from madrassahs, or religious schools, who retain the views which brought them to the war, and "ordinary people gathered from farms" who have largely given up their former beliefs.

"Some (of the current detainees) were commanders of the Taleban, some are relatives of high-ranking Taleban members, some are foot soldiers," Dostum told Reuters.

The ICRC says it is aware of around 3,000 people still detained by U.S. and Afghan authorities around the country.

In Shiberghan officials admit they have no plans to try any captives, and although the government in Kabul talks of further releases, there is some reluctance to let many more go.

"We have some reports that some of those released (from jails around the country) are active once more against the Islamic transitional government," Amrullah Salili, spokesman for Kabul's national directorate of security, told a news briefing on Sunday.

In the prison, 25-year-old Abdul Sattar from the Taleban's former stronghold of Kandahar says he just wants to go home and see his family. "The Taleban is finished," he said. "I don't support them any more. If I am released I will just be in the service of the nation and do good deeds and not bad deeds."