The Bagram detention centre, which holds 600 detainees, does not have a good record, say its critics. In 2002 there were two deaths inside the detention centre allegedly due to torture at the hands of US troops. Few details are known about the people being detained there. “The people in Bagram now are individuals that have been captured by the US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. So they are most likely Afghans who are affiliated in some way with the Taliban and have engaged in combat against US forces,” says Ken Gude, Associate Director of the International Rights and Responsibility Program at American Progress.

Prisoners have no legal access

Ahmad Nader Nadery, Spokesperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission says prisoners in Bagram are being denied their rights: “The detainees in the Bagram detention facility are not having any legal access,” says Nadery. “They don’t have access to defence lawyers and they are not presented before court in the last eight years.”

Back in September 2009, the Obama administration finally decided to allow detainees to challenge their detention before the court with the help of a lawyer. But Nadery says the promises have not yet been met. “It is not being implemented yet. We don’t have any first hand access to what is going on in there.”

And common Afghans detest the Obama Administration's operations in Bagram. Ahmad Zia Langari says, “To give some rights to the detainees is a little promoting step. But why US force have a detention centre in Afghanistan? They should deliver the detainees or those who were arrested from the battle ground to the Afghan judicial forces.”

But, Gude is against this. “It is unrealistic to expect the United States to have tens of thousands of US military forces engaged in combat in Afghanistan and to not have United states maintain at least some control over the detention operations of those forces in that country,” says Gude.

New detention centre in Bagram

Human Rights activists have long been voicing concern over the plight of prisoners in Bagram. Some even call Bagram the Afghan Guantanamo. But Gude disagrees. “There is no reason to suspect that Bagram will be a new Guantanamo. If you reject the ability of the United States to detain individuals in an ongoing military conflict then you can describe Bagram as the new Guantanamo. But I think there is absolutely no support for that position.”

And now there is a new detention centre with “better facilities” designed to house roughly 700 detainees. It is expected to start operations soon. Brigadier General Mark Martins, the interim commander for US detainee operations in Afghanistan, said the long term goal for the new state of the art prison is to train Afghan guards to handle terrorism and eventually hand over the prison to them.

Some Rights group worry that opening of a new detention centre will serve to extend the war for a longer period of time.

Author: Debarati Mukherjee
Editor: Grahame Lucas