FAISALABAD, Pakistan: The US handed over control of Afghanistan’s Bagram jail to Kabul three months ago. But nothing has changed for dozens of foreign inmates inside “the Afghan Guantanamo”.
In what has been described as a “prison within a prison”, the US continues to operate within Bagram’s walls.
After years of imprisonment, some 60 non-Afghan detainees, mostly Pakistanis but also Saudis and Kuwaitis, are denied face-to-face access to lawyers and have not been charged with any crime.
They were exempted from the US handover in March of more than 3,000 Bagram prisoners to authorities. Their situation has prompted comparisons with detainees at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
In a miserable hamlet with the soulless name “Village 105”, lost in the vast Punjab wheatfields outside the town of Faisalabad, Abdul Razzaq keeps treasured photos of his brother Amanatullah Ali.
It has been nearly 10 years since they saw each other. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Ali went to Iraq for pilgrimage, his brother says. But he and friend Yunus Rahmatullah were arrested by UK troops as suspected militants and handed over to the Americans.
Many fighters ended up being sent to Guantanamo. But because Ali and Rahmatullah spoke Urdu, not Arabic, they were taken to Afghanistan where US forces had translators to interrogate them.
“His wife contacted us and said she had had no news from him for six or seven months, then they searched for him but found no trace and we feared he had been kidnapped or killed,” Razzaq said.
In 2005 the family received a letter from Ali. Four years later he spoke to his family for the first time by phone. “I asked him, ‘Do you have any problems in jail?’” said Razzaq. “He replied, ‘Jail is in itself the problem’.”
Now every few months Razzaq travels about 450km from his village to Islamabad to see and talk to Ali on Skype at the International Committee of the Red Cross offices. The line is cut by the Americans when they move onto topics deemed too sensitive.
A US defence official said Washington considered the detainees “enemy combatants” and they do not enjoy legal rights that would be accorded to a criminal suspect in a US civilian court.
He declined to say if the detainees have access to a lawyer, and acknowledged they will remain behind bars as long as US forces stay in Afghanistan.
The US is preparing to withdraw the bulk of its remaining 65,000 troops by the end of next year, and Razzaq hopes this will mean an end to Ali’s ordeal.
But his release process will be long and complex. Britain’s Supreme Court has ruled that Ali’s transfer to Bagram and detention are illegal but he is still inside.
“With the drawdown happening and the US pulling out of Afghanistan it’s creating an even bigger question of what are you going to do with these guys,” said Sarah Belal, a lawyer defending Bagram detainees she has never met. “There is a prison within a prison controlled by the US forces because they are holding these 60 detainees, so this is what we mean by legal black hole: These people have no recourse to any courts or any rights.” Afp
