Posted on 02/26/2006 4:36:55 PM PST by blam
US-run jail in Afghanistan 'worse than Guantanamo'
By Alec Russell in Washington
(Filed: 27/02/2006)
An American-run prison for terrorist suspects in Afghanistan has grown to rival and even eclipse Guantanamo Bay with hundreds of inmates in legal limbo, it was disclosed yesterday.
Away from the spotlight focused on the more notorious detention camp in Cuba, Bagram, a US base north of Kabul, now houses about 500 detainees, claimed the New York Times.
The situation there resembles the "legal void" that led to the Supreme Court ruling in 2004 giving Guantanamo prisoners the right to challenge their detention in US courts, Bush administration officials told the paper.
Conditions at Bagram have improved since the violent deaths of two inmates in late 2002 but they remain harsher than at Guantanamo.
"Bagram was never meant to be a long-term facility and now it's a long-term facility without the money or resources," said one Pentagon official who visited the jail.
"Anyone who has been to Bagram would tell you it is worse [than Guantanamo]."
The number held at Bagram's former Soviet aircraft machine shop is reported to have risen from 100 in early 2004 to 600 at times last year.
Officials said the increase was partly a result of a decision by the Bush administration in 2004 to stop sending more prisoners to Cuba.
A former senior administration official. "For some reason people did not have a problem with Bagram. It was in Afghanistan."
Some detainees are believed to have been previously held at the CIA's so-called black sites, secret interrogation centres across the world.
The CIA is thought to have been wary of sending former inmates from "black sites" to Guantanamo Bay lest they ended up testifying about the CIA's custody in court
Of course it is.
And in that same ruling, the Supreme Court said detainees held on foreign soil are outside the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court so there is noting the ACLU can do to help the terrorists held in Afghanistan.
And I take comfort in that... spread the word far and wide.
Come on ACLU. Get over to Afghanistan and check out the prison so you can file more lawsuits.
The Telegraph (UK)
By Tom Coghlan in Kabul
(Filed: 27/02/2006)
Hundreds of captured Taliban and suspected al-Qa'eda fighters ran riot in Afghanistan's most notorious prison yesterday as inmates seized control of its three blocks during an eruption of violence.
The Islamists, who were said last night to be holding an American prisoner hostage, were among an estimated 1,500 prisoners at Kabul's vast Pul-e-Charki jail whose revolt was triggered on Saturday night by new rules to impose a prison uniform on inmates.
Pul-e-Charki jail in Kabul
The uprising, which soon took on a political tone, was said to have begun in the block that houses the captured fighters.
They were heard chanting "Allah-u-Akbar" (God is great) and "Death to America" yesterday.
It then spread to a block that houses convicted criminals and another housing women. There were also reports that women prisoners had been raped and several fires broke out around the complex.
Seven prisoners were reported to have been killed and more than 30 injured yesterday, as more than 1,000 soldiers and police attempted to bring the riot under control. The Daily Telegraph witnessed troops firing sporadically at the windows of the blocks housing Taliban prisoners as dusk fell.
An American Predator spy drone circled overhead and a number of American military personnel were advising Afghan army officers inside the prison.
Afghan officers said that among the prisoners involved in the revolt yesterday were Mullah Mohammad Mujaheed, a senior Taliban commander, and Timur Shah, a notorious Afghan bandit who was convicted of kidnapping an Italian employee of the United Nations last year.
there ignorance knows no bounds
They rioted because we wanted to give them a clean set of clothes?
I'll get back to you when I care. :-)
I have always held freedom of the press in high esteem, but there is a limit.
I am not among those who believe "treason" is a quaint old fashioned concept.
Time to do some serious reflection, as a nation, and make a few of these newspapers disappear.
Freedom's death wish...
The author should call 911 and see if anyone gives a Shiite.
They only get Chicken ala King instead of Chicken Cordon Bleu. And of course it's a little colder there than balmy Guantanamo.
Correction: make that "Chicken Allah King." The spell check missed the error.
Is anybody on Hillary's staff working on the Terrorist's Bill of Rights?
there were only seventy-one virgins and half of them had four legs.
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