Published on Friday, November 27, 2009 by Inter Press Service
U.S. Military Unveils Huge New Prison in Afghanistan
by Feraidoon KhwazoonKABUL - The U.S. military has announced the opening of a new prison on Bagram Air Base. The prison, costing 60 million dollars, will hold up to 1,100 prisoners at any one time.
U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Martins, a U.S. Army lawyer who undertook an examination this year of Afghan and American prisons, said that the prison would be handed over to the Afghan government, though it is unclear when that handover will take place.
Last week, reporters were taken on a tour of the facility, a dramatic move by the military, as no journalists - and few visitors of any kind - were allowed inside the old prison. The tour was part of a U.S. effort to show more transparency. Washington has been accused of a variety of human rights violations against Afghan detainees at Bagram.
Brig. Gen Martins stressed that "vocational training" will be available at the facility, to give job skills to those who have been held there. A review board, which examines prisoner's cases, will sit at the new jail as well as provide resources for prisoners to challenge their detention through legal means.
By the end of this year about 700 prisoners from the old Bagram prison will be transferred to the new facility.
Abdul Qadir Adalat, a deputy at the Ministry of Justice, says that the construction of this facility is a positive step. Though he just learned about the new prison "last Thursday", he said the fact that Afghan and international security forces will be conducting joint operations to apprehend anti-government fighters is a good thing.
But some legal analysts say that a foreign power building a prison on Afghan soil to hold Afghans without charge is in fact illegal. Nasrullah Stanikzai, professor of law at Kabul University, says that according to Afghan and international law, the right to hold citizens against their will belongs solely to a nation's government.http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/27-0
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