Afghan prisons: a bleaker Guantánamo (U.S.) and rioting (Afghanistan)

the stories about the u.s. treatment of detainees worsen by the day...

While an international debate rages over the future of the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the military has quietly expanded another, less-visible prison in Afghanistan, where it now holds some 500 terror suspects in more primitive conditions, indefinitely and without charges.

NB: "expanded," "less visible," "more primitive," and "indefinitely" - quite a damning list for a single paragraph.

[U]nlike those at Guantánamo, they have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants," military officials said.

[...]

[A] picture emerges of a place that is in many ways rougher and more bleak than its counterpart in Cuba. Men are held by the dozen in large wire cages, the detainees and military sources said, sleeping on the floor on foam mats and, until about a year ago, often using plastic buckets for latrines. Before recent renovations, they rarely saw daylight except for brief visits to a small exercise yard.

and, now that guantánamo is fully in the spotlight...

[T]he growing detainee population at Bagram, which rose from about 100 prisoners at the start of 2004 to as many as 600 at times last year, according to military figures, was in part a result of a Bush administration decision to shut off the flow of detainees into Guantánamo after the Supreme Court ruled that those prisoners had some basic due-process rights.

so, not only are we diverting prisoners from guantánamo to bagram, we're also diverting them to an afghan prison where rioting broke out this morning...

Terror convicts and hundreds of other inmates clashed with guards and took control of parts of a high-security prison in Afghanistan's capital, officials said Sunday.

Police and soldiers surrounded the Policharki Prison on Sunday as government officials attempted to negotiate with the inmates, who include al-Qaida and Taliban militants.

[...]

Several wings of Policharki are being refurbished to improve security and living conditions. Some 110 Afghan terror suspects are expected to be transferred there later this year from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Afghan officials say.

we've got one hell of a mess on our hands with zero indication that anything is going to be done to clean it up...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet