ICRC Confirms Existence of Second Secret Prison at Bagram, BBC Reports Torture

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/46757

ICRC Confirms Existence of Second Secret Prison at Bagram, BBC Reports Torture
By: Jeff Kaye Tuesday May 11, 2010 8:42 am

Hilary Anderson at BBC has been following the Bagram prison story closely. Today, she reports that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has confirmed the existence of a second prison site at Bagram. The presence of a second site has long been suspected, a prison the Afghans call Tor Prison, or the "Black" Prison.

The US military says the main prison, now called the Detention Facility in Parwan, is the only detention facility on the base.

However, it has said it will look into the abuse allegations made to the BBC.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that since August 2009 US authorities have been notifying it of names of detained people in a separate structure at Bagram.

Obama Tortures, Too

Last month, BBC reported on conditions at the main Parwan facility. The scenes as described were right out of the iconography of Guantanamo. Prisoners in handcuffs and leg shackles, "moved around in wheelchairs" with blackout goggles and headphones "to block out all sound." This was the treatment for a prison population that even the U.S. military admits is far and away not made up of serious terrorists. Meanwhile, the number held at Bagram has swelled to approximately 800 prisoners.

But we don’t know how many are in the other, "the Black Hole." We don’t know because the U.S. still insists that no second prison exists. Prisoners held at Tor, according to investigations by BBC, are tossed into cold concrete cells, where the light is kept on 24 hours. Noise machines fill their cells with constant sound, and prisoners are sleep deprived as a matter of policy, with each cell monitored by a camera, so the authorities will know when someone is falling asleep and come to wake them.

Prisoners are beaten and abused. According to BBC’s article last month, one prisoner was "made to dance to music by American soldiers every time he wanted to use the toilet."

..more..
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(somehow missed this story last month)

Afghans 'abused at secret prison' at Bagram airbase

By Hilary Andersson
BBC News, Bagram
April 15

Inmates from the old prison at Bagram have been moved elsewhere

Afghan prisoners are being abused in a "secret jail" at Bagram airbase, according to nine witnesses whose stories the BBC has documented.

The abuses are all said to have taken place since US President Barack Obama was elected, promising to end torture.

The US military has denied the existence of a secret detention site and promised to look into allegations.

Bagram was the site of a controversial jail holding hundreds of inmates, who have now been moved to another complex.

The old prison was notorious for allegations of prisoner torture and abuse.

But witnesses told the BBC in interviews or written testimony that abuses continue in a hidden facility.


..more..

I'll second that

Guantanamo but not the notorious prison at Bagram? Racquetball?

because really most governments doesn't give a shit about human rights. The only reason WE have any rights? They need SOME of us to vote them into office.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0514/abuses-black-jail-afghanistan-confirmed/


Abuses at US ‘Black Jail’ in Afghanistan confirmed

By Muriel Kane
Friday, May 14th, 2010 --

Earlier this week, the International Red Cross confirmed the existence of a secret "Black Jail" within the Bagram prison complex in Afghanistan, where high-value detainees were held and allegedly abused. Since then, additional details have continued to emerge.

The New York Times reported last November that former prisoners and human rights researchers had described how prisoners were held at the facility for weeks at a time without being allowed outside contact. The BBC also obtained accounts from prisoners who said they had been subjected to isolation, sleep deprivation, and cold.

The American vice admiral in charge of detainees, however, continued to deny both the existence of a separate facility and the allegations of abuse until the International Red Cross confirmed the claims.

Now The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder has been able to paint a clearer picture of the facility. His sources tell him that it is run by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC), whose operatives perform the interrogations on behalf of a subunit of the"elite counter-terrorism brigade" known as Task Force 714.

Task Force 714 was formerly commanded by General Stanley McChrystal, who now leads US forces in Afghanistan. According to Ambinder, DCHC is a "relatively new organization," which absorbed many of the previous functions and staff of the Counterintelligence Field Activity after CIFA was accused of spying on American political groups and was implicated in the Duke Cunningham scandal.

He's the journalist who wrote The Guantanamo Files and he's working on compiling a list of prisoners at Bagram.


http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/bagram-the-first-ever-prisoner-list-the-annotated-version/

edit: remove cussing

"In an article to follow, I’ll examine how the list reveals not only that around 3,000 prisoners have been held at Bagram in the last six years, but also how the majority of the prisoners listed here were seized in 2008 and 2009 — and I’ll examine what this means with regard to the US administration’s detention policies and the Geneva Conventions, which were discarded by George W. Bush and have clearly not been reintroduced by Barack Obama."


this is more information on Bagram than one might find most anywhere else that I'm aware of, above is just an example.
thanks

nt

if they can't stand up against war crimes now, then their criticisms of Bush were just empty words.

And continues under Obama. One of the dirty little secrets of this administration, and probably the major reason why Obama refused to prosecute Bush.

everythingsgonnnabe GREAT!

Look, you don't seriously expect us to believe the President knows about all this, do you?
That would make him out to be some kind of utterly cynical liar, deceiving the people who made him the party's nominee, and the American public too, along with the rest of the world. He can't be that. Read the rules.