Family wants answers on missing 3-year-old West Virginia girl

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. –  Her mother is in prison for welfare fraud. Her stepfather is lying low. Her six siblings, some just infants, are in the custody of child welfare authorities. And Aliayah Lunsford, the brown-eyed 3-year-old who vanished from her West Virginia home a year ago Monday, is still missing.

"It just seems like everybody's forgotten her," said Aliayah's great-aunt Vickie Bowen, "but we're never going to forget."

In the year since Aliayah disappeared from her family's rented house in the Bendale section of Lewis County, Bowen has concluded the girl is probably dead, though she avoids using the word.

"But we still need to know. We need that closure," Bowen said. "We need to take care of her."

Aliayah's mother, Lena Lunsford, told police her daughter was in bed, wearing purple pajama pants and a pink sweat shirt, at 6:30 a.m. Sept. 24, 2011. But she said the child was missing when she checked on her a few hours later.

Six months later, an FBI official said investigators had a working theory about what happened — and it didn't involve a break-in. The agency has since refused to say what agents believe happened to Aliayah or whether they think she's still alive, though it is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to her recovery or an arrest.

Authorities have made no arrests and named no suspects, only describing the people of interest as "a small universe."

Lewis County Sheriff's Deputy Lt. David Parks declined to discuss details of the investigation this week and referred questions to the FBI, which didn't return several messages. However, local authorities have put information about Aliayah in a brochure for people attending a hunting and fishing expo this weekend.

"It's something that stays in our minds all the time here," Parks said. "It's not something you can forget: There's a little girl missing."

Parks said the case is still active and tips are still coming in, though relatives complain they've had no updates in months.

"If there were more to do, we'd be doing it," he said. "Unfortunately, right now we're doing what we can with what we have."

Aliayah Lunsford's case has gotten little attention beyond the boundaries of her small home state, failing to resonate with the public in the way that Caylee Anthony's story did even though both girls were toddlers with chubby cheeks and brown hair.

The body of the 2-year-old Florida girl was found a month after she was reported missing in 2008. Anthony's mother, Casey, was charged with murder after telling a string of lies to police but was later acquitted.

However, Aliayah's case is different in several ways: Neither the immediate family nor the police sought national media attention. Investigators have been tight-lipped about the case, the family and their working theories from the start.

Aliayah's parents were also poor, and their family relationships were splintered before the girl vanished, so there has been no prominent spokesman.

And Aliayah has never been found, dead or alive.

The girl's mother was indicted weeks after Aliayah's disappearance on charges she illegally swapped welfare benefits for cash five times in two months. She was sentenced in May to eight months in prison after pleading guilty to selling $114 worth of credit on her food-stamp card for $50 cash and reported to prison in late June.

Attorney Mike Woelfel, who has represented Lena Lunsford in unrelated civil matters, has said Lena doesn't believe her daughter wandered off and has cooperated with investigators. She's also certain "no blood relative of Aliayah knows what has happened to her," though Woelfel has never elaborated.

Woelfel said he spoke to Lena Lunsford on Friday, and she told him she still believes "Aliayah is out there, alive."

"She's told the FBI everything she knows," he said, "so she's basically powerless to do anything other than sit and wait."

Lena Lunsford filed for divorce from her husband, Ralph Keith Lunsford, after her daughter's disappearance, and is still waiting for it to be finalized. She'd been ordered by a judge to live apart from Ralph after he acknowledged buying and using synthetic drugs called bath salts.

Both parents have repeatedly refused to comment on Aliayah's disappearance, but in a court proceeding, Ralph Lunsford acknowledged police had considered him a person of interest and repeatedly questioned him in the case.

Lena Lunsford gave birth to twins after Aliayah disappeared and before she went to prison. Bowen, their great-aunt, has never met them. Nor does she know where the other children are.

"Until we find answers for Aliayah," she said, "there's no chance of seeing them."

After a year with no solid leads, Bowen is frustrated — but she and a group of about 10 people still search regularly for Aliayah.

"If we hear anything, anything at all, we're there. No matter how unbelievable it seems to us, we go check it out," she said.

On Monday, Bowen and others will plant flowers near the welcome sign in Weston to honor Aliayah. They'll distribute flyers with her picture and post them at area businesses. They're even planning a small afternoon demonstration at the Lewis County Courthouse.

"We're not giving up," Bowen said. "There's no way we're going to give up. A child does not simply disappear."

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US, Afghanistan locked in dispute over Taliban and terror suspects in prisons

KABUL, Afghanistan –  President Hamid Karzai welcomed Monday's handover of the main American-run prison to Afghan forces as a victory for Afghan sovereignty, though he and U.S. officials remain locked in a dispute over the fate of hundreds of Taliban and terror suspects behind bars.

The United States is withholding the transfer of scores of inmates, reportedly out of concern that Afghan authorities may simply let some detainees go and no longer hold dangerous prisoners without charge.

American irritation was apparent at the ceremony at the prison, about 25 miles north of Kabul. No higher ranking American officers attended, although the Afghan government sent its defense minister, army chief of staff and other officials.

Karzai also did not attend, though he released a statement calling the handover a "very big step regarding the sovereignty of Afghanistan."

"Now, the Bagram prison is converted to one of Afghanistan's regular prisons where the innocents will be freed and the rest of the prisoners will be sentenced according to the laws of Afghanistan," the statement said.

The more than 2,000 Afghan military policemen now at the prison said the inmates were pleased to be guarded by Afghans.

"We are Afghan and they are Afghan. They are Muslim. We are Muslim," said Ashna Gul, a military policeman from Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan. "We can see each other through the steel windows. Sometimes we are laughing and joking with the prisoners and they are happy with our guys."

Firoz Khan, another military policeman from Nangarhar, said some of the inmates ask him to get them more soap and shampoo.

"We sympathize with them because they are prisoners and they are away from their families," Khan said.

Hours after the handover ceremony, a suicide attack killed 15 people and wounded 25 others in the northern city of Kunduz. The bombing was a stark reminder that insurgents continue their fight against Afghan and U.S.-led coalition troops and that many detainees at the prison are suspected of organizing such attacks.

The U.S. began detention operations at Bagram Air Field in early 2002. For several years, prisoners were kept at a former Soviet aircraft machine plant converted into a lockup. In 2009, the U.S. opened a new detention facility next door. The number of detainees incarcerated at the prison, now called the Parwan Detention Facility, has swelled from about 1,100 in September 2010 to 3,110 in the spring of this year.

The prison has been the focus of controversy in the past but never had the notoriety of the prisons at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Had  Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden been captured instead of killed, CIA Director Leon Panetta said he would have been taken to Bagram first, then probably to Guantanamo Bay.

Earlier this year, the prison gained unwanted attention when hundreds of Korans and other religious materials were taken from its library and sent to a burn pit at the military base. The event triggered scores of deadly anti-American protests across Afghanistan. More than 30 Afghans and six U.S. soldiers were killed during the violent demonstrations. Karzai said Korans would never have been burned if Afghans had been in control of the prison then.

Karzai and the United States signed a memorandum of understanding about the future of the detention facility on March 9, following tense negotiations that frequently stalled.

Since then, the U.S. has transferred 3,082 detainees to Afghan control, according to Afghan Army Gen. Ghulam Farouk, who now heads the prison. He said Monday that the U.S. was in the process of transferring the remaining 30 inmates picked up before the memorandum was signed plus another 600 captured after the signing.

But a few weeks ago, the U.S. stopped all transfers.

"Some 99 percent of the detainees captured before 9 March have already been transferred to Afghan authority, but we have paused the transfer of the remaining detainees until our concerns are met," said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition.

Graybeal would not describe the concerns, but a report released last week by the New York-based Open Society Foundations said the rift was over whether the Afghans will have a so-called "internment" system that allows some detainees to be held without charge or trial. The U.S. has been holding detainees in internment at Bagram for years.

Although the Afghan government agreed to embrace an internment system by signing the accord in March, some top Afghan officials and legal experts contend it violates the Afghan constitution, the report said. Moreover, Karzai himself is opposed to administrative detention, according to the report.

The U.S. is now worried that the Afghan government will discontinue internment and either release dangerous detainees or forward their cases to the loosely run Afghan judicial system, which is tainted by corruption and secrecy, the group said.

"There are concerns on the U.S. side about division in the Afghan government over internment and that it is not constitutional," said Rachel Reid, a senior policy adviser on Afghanistan for the Open Society Foundations. "The basic concern is that if they don't have internment, they will be released."

On the flip side of the legal issue, some Afghan legal experts are worried about Afghan officials abusing any authority to hold detainees without trial.

"Consider the fact that even our regular laws are ignored by powerful people," said Abdul Qawi Afzali of the Legal Aid Organization Afghanistan. "What will happen when you give them the actual, legal power to detain people like this law does?"

Panetta, the Pentagon chief, spoke with Karzai by phone Monday and "expressed a shared commitment to implement the terms of the memorandum of understanding on detention operations," said his press secretary, George Little. He said the phone call was cordial.

Monday was the deadline for the transfer of the prison.

In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen downplayed the dispute and said the handover reflected the ongoing process of Afghans taking the lead for running security and other institutions in their homeland. Afghan policemen and soldiers are to be in charge of security across the country by the end of 2014, when most international troops will have left or moved into support roles.

"We take it for granted that the Afghan authorities will take all necessary measures to prevent any security risks," the NATO chief said. "That's also in their interest."

Afghan officials also played down the issue.

Acting Defense Minister Enayatullah Nazari said after the ceremony that the delay in handing over the rest of the prisoners was due to "technical issues."

Farouk, the new prison director, said: "We are telling the Afghan president and the Afghan people that today is a proud day. We will protect the rights of prisoners according to international law and Afghan law."

There is another major issue that remains unresolved at the prison.

The memorandum of understanding did not address the estimated 50 non-Afghan prisoners that the U.S. is holding at the prison. They include individuals from Pakistan, Tunisia, Yemen and detainees transferred to Bagram from other wars, such as Iraq. The U.S. will retain custody of these non-Afghan prisoners until their fate is addressed in another agreement between the Afghan and U.S. governments.

At the ceremony, 16 prisoners, all wearing matching gray sweaters, were released.

Haji Lalai from Kandahar, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, said he was detained at the prison two years — 20 months by the U.S. military and four months under Afghan guard.

"It was OK, but sometimes the Americans had a bad attitude against us," he said, adding that he didn't like the prison food and often shivered in his cell. "I am happy to be released. I was not an insurgent. I was innocent. I was arrested in my house."

Mirwais, a man from Zabul province in the south who uses only one name, told a similar story.

"The U.S. raided my home. I'm a shopkeeper. I was at home with my family and they raided my home at night and took me to Bagram," Mirwais said, adding that he was imprisoned for 10 months. "The Americans' attitude toward us was not good."

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