By Alok Bhatt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
BAGRAM, Afghanistan – U.S. military officials in Afghanistan recently afforded international journalists the opportunity to inspect the newly refurbished Bagram Air-Base. The air-base currently serves as the largest U.S. hub in Afghanistan, holding over 24,000 U.S. military personnel and private, contracted personnel working within the facility. Although the air-base was already almost inundated with the immense forces of U.S. troops, the base, utilized as a make-shift prison by the U.S. army, had been undergoing significant refurbishment to accommodate for an increase in armed forces occupying the area. As the base stood before the adjustments, approximately 65,000 American troops and 45,000 allied troops held station at the Bagram Air-Base. The new Bagram is supposed to be able to hold an estimated 80,000 troops in addition to those already there. The new prison facilities cost about $60,000,000 to construct. The U.S. military suggested that the new Bagram will represent a progressive step towards more transparent practices in the treatment of detainees.
Human rights and activist groups have long chastised the U.S. military for its history of subjecting Bagram detainees to harsh mistreatment. Numerous allegations of torture and violent interrogation methods have arisen since the U.S. military’s utilization of the Bagram Air-Base in 2003. Bagram Air-Base has even earned the infamous title of “Guantanamo II”, or the “evil twin of Guantanamo.” Numerous investigative reports have released throughout the U.S. military’s years of using Bagram Air-Base have revealed consistent information suggesting that the mistreatment of Bagram prisoners far superseded the abuse Guantanamo detainees endured.
Additionally, Bagram Air-Base detainees apparently received less process rights than Guantanamo prisoners, raising human rights issues besides torture and abuse. Many Bagram inmates were apparently denied legal representation altogether and held without knowledge as to why or for how long.
Ex-employees of Bagram have expressed skepticism towards the purported purposes and policies of the refurbished facility. Many believe that the new developments will do nothing to alter the practices of Bagram personnel. Ex-guards described situations in which inmates lived every moment in continual fear of being abused or even killed, as gunmen stationed themselves at high points within the confines of Bagram walls.
Reporters were not allowed to correspond with the inmates in the new Bagram facility to ascertain their perspective on the supposedly new, more rights-based policies. Without these first-hand accounts, the truth of that matter remains to be seen.
For more information, please see:
Al-Jazeera – US unveils extended Bagram prison – 16 November 2009
Yahoo! News – Already the main Afghan war hub, Bagram is growing – 1 November 2009
Zimbio – Bagram Air Base To Under $60 Million Expansion – 2 November 2009
