Bagram

US to transfer Bagram prison to full Afghan control (again)

By:
Published February 12, 2013, in Bagram

FD Editor’s Note:  (sigh)  “US to transfer Bagram prison to full Afghan control.”  Wh…. again?  I’m beginning to feel like “Ground Hog Day.”  Or perhaps it’s just the “Twilight Zone“.  Anyway, let’s see if this “soon” is sooner than the last one.

Man, I've been standing here since September 2012, I'm tired! Can we get this over with finally?

Man, I’ve been standing here since September 2012, I’m tired! Can we get this transfer over with finally?

Control over the American-built Bagram Prison will be fully transferred to Afghanistan soon, local media said Saturday.

The transfer of the prison at Bagram Air Base is a condition to sign a security agreement with Afghanistan.

Some 600 prisoners are still held by American officials at their part of the prison.

A recent United Nations report exposed abuse and torture of detainees in Afghan prisons and intelligence facilities.

Voice of Russia, RIA

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Left behind: Fate of Pakistani prisoners in Afghanistan uncertain

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Published November 14, 2012, in Bagram

Saba Imtiaz

Fazal Karim.

“A decade of war is ending,” announced US President Barack Obama when he won this year’s presidential election. Foreign troops are set to pull out from Afghanistan by 2014 but the Pakistani casualties of war – citizens held in a detention facility in Afghanistan – do not know when their ordeal will end.

The Justice Project Pakistan (JPP) has begun legal proceedings on the issue. It petitioned the Lahore High Court, which directed the government this January to begin negotiations with the US and Afghanistan governments for the return of Pakistani citizens held in Bagram. The Lahore High Court hearing is scheduled for today (November 15).

In 2010, then foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told the Senate that there were 19 Pakistanis detained at Bagram. That number, according to a press briefing at the foreign office on January 26, is now 30. The JPP, however, says there are 37 Pakistanis at Bagram.

According to the list of Pakistani prisoners at Bagram provided by Qureshi to the Senate, they were all allegedly detained in Afghanistan and Iraq.

However, families of those detained deny this version.

According to the Senate list, a man named Fazal Karim was detained in Kandahar on October 3, 2004 on charges of “attacks against coalition forces convoy/oil tankers”.

But his elder brother Fazal Rehman has a different story to tell: Fazal Karim, then 21, went missing in 2003, while en route to Peshawar from Karachi.

For two years, his family enlisted the support of friends and relatives to retrace his steps. In 2005, his family learnt he was at Bagram after they received a letter from him via the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Rehman denies the charges against his brother in the Senate list. “This is a false allegation,” he said. “And at that time, there weren’t even attacks on Nato convoys like there are now.” Karim used to work as a trader, buying cassettes and CDs from Peshawar to sell in Karachi.

Continues…

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Franz Kafka Lives (at Guantanamo and Bagram)

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Published July 27, 2012, in Bagram, Guantanamo

By Paul R. Pillar

Among the legal anomalies and affronts to justice involved in certain things the United States does in the name of counterterrorism is an incarceration netherworld that seems likely to persist as indefinitely as the detention of many of the people caught in it. We didn’t seem to have this problem before 9/11. But the popular sense, after that one off-the-charts terrorist event, that America was “at war” led to the problem. The Bush administration obliged by declaring a “war on terror.” Applying the established law of war would not suffice, however; that would have meant giving suspected terrorists the rights of prisoners of war. The response was to handle anyone who came into U.S. hands with some suspicion of possibly having something to do with terrorism as if they were not subject to any system of law and the rights associated with it. People scoffed up in Afghanistan or elsewhere were declared to be “illegal combatants” if they were declared to be anything at all. Most were sent to a newly established detention facility at Guantanamo, the location of which was not chosen so the prisoners could enjoy the mild Caribbean climate. The location was chosen with the intention of keeping detentions there outside the purview of anyone’s law, given Guantanamo’s special status as a base under a long-term lease that is outside the United States but also not subject to the sovereign control of any foreign country.

The ploy has not worked completely, in that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush in 2008 that Guantanamo detainees have a right to contest their detention in U.S. courts. But the specific practices at Guantanamo continue to reflect the legal vacuum in which the prisoners find themselves. One recent decision by the Obama administration about which the New York Times editorial page appropriately took exception severely limits the right of prisoners to consult their attorneys in confidence. As one of the lawyers involved pointed out, this vitiates the right of habeas corpus that the Supreme Court formally bestowed four years ago.

Continues…

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Judge orders Pakistan Government to interview citizens held illegally by US at Bagram (Reprieve)

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Published July 13, 2012, in Bagram

A Pakistani judge has ordered the country’s Government to visit a US prison in Afghanistan in order to interview the seven Pakistani nationals illegally detained there – including one prisoner originally captured by UK forces in 2004.

In response to a petition filed by non-profit law firm Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a Lahore High Court judge ordered Pakistan’s Government to interview the seven detainees in Bagram Internment Facility, and to gather information to enable their lawyers to pursue their case before US authorities. The detainees include Yunus Rahmatullah, who was originally detained by British forces and subsequently rendered to Bagram, where he was held incommunicado for six years. 
 
Noting that lawyers are not allowed to visit Bagram, the court has ordered the Government to seek official access to the notorious prison, and to report back within one month with detailed information about the seven Pakistanis, some of whom have been held beyond the rule of law for as long as eight years.
 
JPP’s Sara Belal, barrister for the petitioners said: “This is a great moment for us, and for the innocent Pakistanis wasting away in Bagram. The judiciary has finally lived up to its promise of standing up for the ordinary citizens against the excesses of the State. Yet, we still have a long way to go and we will not stop fighting until these seven Pakistanis are actually released and reunited with their families in Pakistan.”
 
Reprieve’s Director Clive Stafford Smith said:  “While it is heartening to hear that these prisoners may be getting closer to release, the problem here is not the Pakistani Government – it is the US Government holding Pakistani citizens for years beyond the rule of law. The US must return to supposed American values – justice and the rule of law – and either give these men a fair trial or release them.”
 

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U.S. to keep control of Afghan ‘Guantanamo’

By:
Published July 10, 2012, in Bagram

FD Editor’s Note:  I think we all knew this…

Deal to hand over prisons to Kabul seen as sham

The United States will retain control of foreign detainees held in an Afghan base known as “the other Guantanamo” despite an agreement with Kabul to hand over the running of all prisons in the country to the government.

With two months to go before the Bagram facility is ceded to the Afghan authorities, The Times has learned that all non-Afghan inmates – including two Pakistanis picked up by British Special Forces in Iraq and illegally flown to Afghanistan – will be kept in a U.S.-run section of the fortified compound with no access to legal assistance or prospect of release.

The quarantining of foreign prisoners from the agreement, as well as the Afghan embrace of a policy of detention without trial for its own citizens, while the U.S. has an effective veto power over any release, has fed concerns that the handover deal between Washington and Kabul is a sham.

Politicians, lawyers and human rights activists have condemned the developments, which they say contravene both local and international laws.

Continues…

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Afghan uproar over ‘the other Guantanamo’

By:
Published July 9, 2012, in Bagram

by: Jeremy Kelly and Deborah Haines
 
AFGHANISTAN-UNREST-US-BAGRAM-PRISON-FILES

The US says it will not hand over Afghan prisoners when it cedes the Bagram prison to Afghanistan. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

THE US will retain control of foreign detainees held in an Afghanistan base known as the other Guantanamo despite an agreement with Kabul to hand over the running of all prisons in the country to the government.

With two months until the Bagram facility is ceded to the Afghan authorities, sources said all non-Afghan inmates would be kept in a US-run section of the compound with no access to legal assistance or prospect of release.

The quarantining of foreign prisoners, as well as the Afghan embrace of a policy of detention without trial for its own citizens, while the US has veto power over any release, has fed concerns the handover deal between Washington and Kabul is a sham.

Politicians, lawyers and human rights activists have condemned the deal, which they say contravenes local and international laws.

Major-General Farouk Barakzai, the Afghan governor of the Detention Facility in Parwan, north of Kabul, said about 50 foreign prisoners would remain under US control.

Told the accord between Kabul and Washington stated there would be no US-run detention centres by September 9, he said: “You are right, but you need to ask these questions of our elders. I am the jailer of the Afghans.”

President Hamid Karzai’s office failed to respond to questions, but a military official from the NATO-led coalition confirmed it would be business as usual for its foreign detainees.

“The (agreement) does not cover foreign nationals. Discussions regarding the status of non-Afghan detainees will be addressed in future negotiations. Until that time, they will remain under US control,” Lieutenant-Colonel Jimmie Cummings said.

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LHC directs MoFA to confirm nationalities of Pakistani detainees in Bagram

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Published May 28, 2012, in Bagram, Prisoner/Detainee Release

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Monday directed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) to confirm nationalities of all 32 Pakistanis detained at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan by US authorities.

Before Justice Khalid Mahmood Khan of the LHC adjourned further hearings for May 30, he heard a petition filed by the non-profit law firm Justice Project Pakistan seeking directions for repatriation of Pakistanis held at the Bagram prison.

The judge issued the order based on the request made in the petition, saying that there can be no real progress in the repatriation of the 32 Pakistani detainees without owning them as Pakistani citizens first.

As the legal counsel for the ministry expressed reservations in conveying to US authorities about nationality of the detainees, Justice Khan said it was a simple request and it should not be problematic to confirm their nationality.

Barrister Sarah Belal, appearing on behalf of the petitioner Sultana Noon, said that after years of indefinite detention, the very least the Pakistani government could do for these detainees was to recognise them as their own.

At the previous hearing  of the case, Sarah had said that under a new agreement between the American and Afghan governments, the United States had pledged to hand over all detention facilities in Afghanistan to Afghan authorities within six months. She said the agreement made no mention of non-Afghan nationals being held at US detention facilities. Consequently, the future of any Pakistanis at Bagram was “uncertain at best” and “they might well disappear” if no action was taken by the Pakistani government within the next six months, she had warned.

The petitioner had submitted that at least seven Pakistanis had been detained at Bagram jail without any charge or trial since 2003. She said they were abducted from Pakistan and shifted to a US prison in Afghanistan.

The seven prisoners nominated Awwal Khan, Hamidullah Khan, Abdul Haleem Saifullah, Fazal Karim, Amal Khan, Iftikhar Ahmad and Younas Rehmatullah.

Earlier, officials in the Foreign Affairs Ministry had told The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity that the release of up to 33 Pakistani citizens detained in the Bagram prison was expected, with negotiations having lasted several years already.

Source

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Homecoming at last: Bagram prison expected to release 33 Pakistanis

By:
Published May 27, 2012, in Bagram, Prisoner/Detainee Release

By Qaiser Butt

The US military-controlled Bagram prison in Afghanistan is expected to release 33 Pakistani prisoners soon, an official from the ministry of foreign affairs told The Express Tribune.

Discussion was opened after a list of the 33 prisoners was handed over to the prison’s authority a long time ago. “Negotiations with US military authorities in charge of Bagram prison are in progress to secure the freedom of 33 Pakistanis detained for several years,” the source said.

It is feared that the number of Pakistanis being held in the US military prison and other Afghan jails is higher than 33. However, through diplomatic channels, the ministry of foreign affairs has so far obtained information about 33 people.

The list included those seven Pakistanis who were abducted from Pakistan and taken to Bagram under mysterious circumstances in 2003.

“We are preparing some documents sought by US officials to establish the innocence of our citizens,” the source said. Interestingly, the American officials are also demanding a guarantee that the 33 prisoners will not be subjected to any interrogation once they return home.

About the nature of crime allegedly committed by the 33 prisoners, the official said that some of them are accused of being involved in objectionable activities. However, many of them were arrested merely on suspicion for having links with opposition forces of the US-backed Afghan regime.

A Pakistani contractor, Tariq Siddiqi, is among the detainees who were taken into custody in Kandahar on a complaint by his Afghan business rival. That Afghan implicated Siddiqi in anti-Afghanistan activities and accused him of maintaining close contacts with the Afghan Taliban in Kandahar.

Sultana Noon, a representative of a non-profit law firm Justice Project Pakistan and a fellow of the UK-based organisation, Reprieve, filed a petition with the Lahore High Court stating that seven people had been abducted from Pakistan and transferred to Bagram prison in 2003.

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Efforts on for Pakistanis’ release from Bagram: LHC told

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Published April 25, 2012, in Abdul Haleem Saifullah, Amal Khan, Awwal Khan, Bagram, Iftikhar Ahmad, Younas Rehmatullah

MINISTRY of foreign affairs on Wednesday informed the Lahore High Court that serious efforts were being made for the release of Pakistani citizens detained at Bagram Airbase prison.

A deputy attorney general stated this appearing before the court of Justice Khalid Mehmood Khan in connection with a petition, seeking release of seven Pakistani citizens imprisoned at the Bagram Theatre Internment Camp in Afghanistan. The law officer requested the court to allow more time so that the ministry could come up with positive report. Upon this, the judge adjourned the hearing for four weeks.

Sultana Noon, a representative of a non-profit law firm and a fellow of Reprieve, a UK-based organization, in Pakistan, filed this petition. She submitted that seven Pakistanis had been detained at Bagram jail without any charge or trial since 2003.

She alleged they were abducted from Pakistan and shifted to the notorious US prison in Afghanistan. These seven are Awwal Khan, Hamidullah Khan, Abdul Haleem Saifullah, Fazal Karim, Amal Khan, Iftikhar Ahmad and Younas Rehmatullah.

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Quran Burning Incites Deadly Riots in Afghanistan

By:
Published February 22, 2012, in Bagram

FD Editor’s Note:  Who needs The Dove World Outreach Center when we have the US Military?

By HEIDI VOGT and RAHIM FAIEZ

Clashes between Afghan troops and protesters angry over the burning of Muslim holy books at a U.S. military base left at least seven people dead and dozens wounded Wednesday as anger spread despite U.S. apologies over what it said was a mistake.

The demonstrations across four eastern provinces illustrated the intensity of Afghans’ anger at what they saw as foreign forces flouting their laws and insulting their culture.

The violence was also a reminder of how easily Afghan-U.S. relations can deteriorate as the two countries work to forge a long-term partnership ahead of the withdrawal of foreign forces in 2014.

The unrest started Tuesday when Afghan workers at the main American military base, Bagram Air Field, saw soldiers dumping books in a pit where garbage is burned and noticed Qurans and other religious material among the trash.

The top U.S. and NATO commander, Gen. John Allen, quickly issued an apology and telephoned President Hamid Karzai and major news organizations to explain that a collection of religious materials, including Qurans, had been mistakenly sent to be incinerated. As soon as someone realized what they were burning, they stopped and retrieved what was left, Allen said.

Four copies of the Quran were burned before the incineration was halted, according to initial Afghan government reports.

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