Bagram military prison

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Aerial photo of Bagram Military Prison 2009.

The Bagram Military Prison , officially known as the Bagram Theater Internment Facility and formerly Bagram Collection Point , was the primary internment camp for the United States Armed Forces in Afghanistan . The facility was located within Bagram Air Base , the headquarters of the American armed forces in Afghanistan. Around 600 actual or suspected terrorists were held prisoner as enemy fighters and interrogated - without having been charged with a crime.

The New York Times repeatedly reported ill-treatment and torture in the camp. In December 2002, two inmates died after days of ill-treatment and torture by the US military. In mid-2008, the US media company McClatchy Newspapers came to the conclusion, after 8 months of surveys, that the internment camp had been a refuge of "brutal, sadistic violence" for at least 20 months after it was opened. The conditions in the camp are said to have been much worse than in Guantánamo .

At the end of November 2009, the prisoners were transferred to a newly built prison complex on the site. This could be viewed by journalists for the first time on November 15, 2009, which was never possible with the old prison wings, as they were generally completely sealed off from the public.

However, the detainees had no access to lawyers and, according to the US government, had no right to appeal their detention in a court of law.

General

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 , the United States government (from 2001 to 2009 the Bush administration under George W. Bush ) began the war in Afghanistan since 2001 . They and their allies pursued the goal (according to official information) of overthrowing the Taliban government , which has ruled since 1996, and to fight the terrorist organization al-Qaeda . The latter were held responsible for the terrorist attacks. The USA initially expected a relatively short intervention.

The Bagram camp, set up as a temporary facility at the beginning of 2002, served as a kind of transit station in the first few years. In military circles one speaks of a so-called screening point . The word screening translates as screening , selecting, sifting or classifying. For the Americans, Bagram was the most important institution of its kind in the region. The US Army first brought the majority of the people arrested by them in Afghanistan or Pakistan there. A large number of the inmates were then transferred to Guantánamo from there. Some people kidnapped by the CIA as part of their rendition program were also smuggled through Bagram before ending up in secret CIA prisons.

From 2005 to 2009 the number of prisoners in Bagram had increased almost sixfold. The reasons given by the New York Times were, on the one hand, the escalating war in the region and, on the other hand, the fact that the Bush administration stopped the transport of inmates to Guantánamo in September 2004. While the number of prisoners in Guantánamo fell from around 600 to 245 in January 2009, their number in Bagram rose to 600 over the same period. At the beginning of 2008 there was even talk of an estimated 630 inmates, but the number had then leveled off again at around 600.

According to official information, most of the inmates were Afghans. Most of them had been arrested during fighting or raids and were suspected of being Taliban fighters. About 30 inmates were nationals of other countries.

State of the quarters

The conditions in the camp are said to be much worse than in Guantánamo, so the prisoners are housed in old aircraft hangars. There they are allegedly held by the dozen in large enclosures fenced off by barbed wire, and according to the New York Times, sleeping mats are used on the floor. The newspaper further writes that up to 2005 the sanitary facilities were inadequate or not available. The prisoners often had to relieve themselves in plastic buckets. Before minor improvements were made in early 2006, the prisoners saw little daylight, apart from brief exits into a small courtyard. Despite minor renovations that have now been carried out, the New York Times described the cells as large wire enclosures in an article from January 2008. It has also been reported that some people are held in solitary confinement.

Mistreatment with two deaths

Dilawar, an inmate, died after hours of abuse by the US military (2002) .
The sketch, drawn by Thomas V. Curtis, a former sergeant in the US Army , shows how he was hung from the ceiling with his hands.

When the first prisoners were arrested in Bagram in 2002, "rough interrogation" and sleep deprivation were routinely practiced. In December 2002, two Afghan inmates were killed after being ill-treated and tortured by US soldiers for days and hanging with their hands from the ceiling of their isolation cells. This incident did not become public knowledge until May 2005 when the New York Times managed to obtain a copy of a nearly 2,000-page secret investigation report. One of the two men was a taxi driver named Dilawar. He was picked up with his car next to a US base and suspected of being an al-Qaeda courier . His case was later filmed in the US documentary Taxi to Hell . The film is based on interviews with participating US soldiers and prisoners. Prisoners who were later transferred to Guantánamo also report severe abuse and torture during interrogation.

In mid-2008, the US media company McClatchy Newspapers came to the conclusion, after 8 months of surveys, that the internment camp had been a refuge of "brutal, sadistic violence" for at least 20 months after it was opened. The investigations interviewed 66 former Guantanamo inmates, 41 of whom were previously detained in Bagram. Of these, 28 said they had been mistreated. McClatchy points out that these former inmates were incarcerated at different times and spoke different languages. The journalists traveled to eleven different countries to conduct these interviews.

According to the New York Times, the treatment methods are said to have improved significantly since 2003. Human rights organizations claim that reports of ill-treatment have steadily decreased since then.

In June 2009, however , BBC News announced that of 27 former prisoners surveyed, 25 had reported ill-treatment in interviews, with the ill-treatment being less severe than in previous years. Respondents were detained at different times between 2002 and 2008. The Pentagon denied these allegations and said the detainees would be treated humanely.

The camp is sealed off from the military, journalists and humanitarian organizations, with the exception of the International Committee of the Red Cross , are denied entry.

Red Cross inspections

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been inspecting the internment camp in Bagram since January 2002 . It is the only non-governmental organization allowed to enter the camp. However, the ICRC does not publicly disclose any information about the conditions in the camp.

In the summer of 2007, however, information was disclosed that was in a confidential document. According to the New York Times, the ICRC writes that dozens of inmates were deliberately kept away from its inspectors for a period of a few weeks or even months. Accordingly, these people were in a separate cell block in solitary confinement held, the ICRC has not been informed of its existence. Sometimes the prisoners housed there were allegedly ill-treated in violation of the Geneva Conventions . A spokeswoman for the United States Department of Defense declined to comment on the report, citing the confidentiality of communications with the ICRC.

The Pentagon spokeswoman also said the ICRC has access to all of those arrested by the Department of Defense after they have been officially registered as such. The military is trying to register the people as soon as possible after they are captured. This usually happens within two weeks. But sometimes it takes longer, added the spokeswoman.

On December 13, 2007, the head of operations at the ICRC admitted that not all cells and prisoners had been made available to inspectors.

Since the beginning of 2008, the ICRC has also had access to some prison camps in the Afghan war zone. Very often people are held captive there first before being brought to Bagram.

German investigation in Bagram

A letter from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) from October 2004 revealed that at that time a German ISAF staff officer was performing liaison duties on the base. According to this, a permit had existed since 2003 to “be able to directly question people suspected of terrorism imprisoned in Bagram as well as their interrogators in justified individual cases”. In a press release from the BKA on July 7, 2006 it was announced that the BKA had never made use of this option. This is also not planned in the future.

Legal basis

Protests against the prison camps in Guantánamo and Bagram in front of the White House (February 2009)

The administration of George W. Bush denied the inmates' rights prisoner of war , the inmates were instead as enemy combatants (enemy combatants) classified that can be held, according to the US government without charge and for an unlimited period. Some prisoners have been detained in Bagram on this basis for over five years without charge. According to the US government, they have no right to challenge their arrest in a court of law.

Compared to Guantánamo, the inmates in Bagram have fewer rights - although from the end of 2009 they should have better opportunities to demonstrate their possible innocence, but still without access to lawyers. Military commissions, in whose proceedings the prisoners were not even involved in the past, decide whether to be released or remain in the country. So they did not find out what they were accused of, nor did they have the opportunity to justify themselves in any way before the commission. In some cases, the further detention of inmates was ordered after they had inspected documents, without the inmates having been examined again.

Shortly after taking office in January 2009, US President Barack Obama commissioned a commission of inquiry to work out possible solutions. On February 20, 2009, the United States Department of Justice announced that the government would, at least for the time being, stick to the old line set by George W. Bush.

John D. Bates, a US district court judge, ruled on April 2, 2009 in three pending individual cases that these three prisoners in Bagram should be treated the same as those in Guantánamo Bay. Thus, according to a ruling by the Supreme Court in 2008, they have the right to appeal their arrest in a US court. According to the court documents, they were only granted this right because they are non-Afghan citizens, were arrested abroad and have been incarcerated in Bagram for several years without charge. Another inmate, who was also an Afghan national, was denied the right to a trial. According to the court order, this decision will have to be made individually in each case in the future.

In September 2009 it was said that the US government wanted to give prisoners more rights. In the future, each inmate should be assigned a supervisor from the ranks of the military. Although these are not lawyers, they are for the first time entitled to secure evidence and to collect testimony. They would also have access to information classified as secret. This should make it easier for the detainees to collect evidence of their innocence, which should then be taken into account in the decisions of the military commission. The measures have been described as improvement by Human Rights First and a lawyer working for Bagram inmates. At the same time, however, they expressed doubts as to whether this would really improve the situation for the prisoners.

Handover of prisoners to Afghan authorities

After some delays, in April 2007 the US began handing over inmates from Bagram to Afghan authorities. For this purpose the United States has modernized a dilapidated prison wing at Pul-e-Charkhi Prison . Afghan soldiers trained by the US military guard this facility outside of Kabul. Instead of quartering two inmates in one cell each, as originally planned, it was decided to assign only one inmate per cell. Therefore, the originally planned capacity was reduced to 330 people.

According to the US Department of Defense, the US military from Bagram has been handing about 20 to 30 inmates to this prison every month since 2007. By January 2009, more than 500 people had been transferred to this facility.

In early 2008, the US officially admitted that this new facility would not be able to accommodate all of the Bagram detainees.

Relocation to the new prison complex

For November 2009, the prisoners were to be transferred to a newly built prison complex on the base to replace the old prison wing. This should significantly improve the conditions of detention for the inmates. The $ 60 million facility was designed for 600 inmates, with a maximum of 1,140 for emergencies.

The new facility, called the detention facility in Parwan after the local Parwan province , has classrooms, workshops for vocational training and its own medical care. It is located on the northeastern edge of the military base and could be operated independently of it by the Afghan authorities - to which a later handover of the prison is planned.

On November 15, 2009, journalists and human rights organizations visited the empty facility, which was never possible with the old prison wings, as they were generally completely sealed off from the public.

List of names published

The American civil rights association ACLU forced the release of data on the prisoners on the basis of the Freedom of Information Act and received a list of 645 names in January 2010, but not their nationality, nor the time and place of the arrest.

German inmate

Ahmad Sidiqi (* 1974) received German citizenship in 2001; In 2009 he traveled to Waziristan with a group and trained in terrorist camps . American special forces arrested him in Kabul in July 2010 . In Bagram Prison, he cooperated with investigators. At the instigation of Foreign Minister Westerwelle, the Americans transferred Sidiqi back to Germany in April 2011. The Higher Regional Court in Koblenz sentenced him to six years imprisonment in May 2012, but added his time in Afghanistan to this.

Handover to Afghanistan

On March 9, 2012, ISAF announced that the Bagram military prison would be placed under the control of the Afghan government for the next six months. The relevant contract was signed by US General John R. Allen and Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak .

On September 10, 2012, 3,000 prisoners were officially handed over to the Afghan authorities. However, there were disagreements regarding the treatment of around 50 foreign extremists, whom the USA classified as very dangerous. The US feared that these prisoners could be released quickly. The prisoners were excluded from the agreement and remained in Bagram, which angered the Afghan authorities. You spoke of a “violation of the sovereignty” of Afghanistan and openly called the US an “occupying power”. After weeks of negotiations, the last prisoners were handed over to Afghanistan on March 25, 2013.

Web links

Commons : Bagram Military Prison  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthias Gebauer, John Goetz, Britta Sandberg : The forgotten Guantanamo . In: Der Spiegel . No. 39 , 2009, p. 102-104 ( online - 21 September 2009 ).
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Tim Golden: Foiling US Plan, Prison Expands in Afghanistan. In: New York Times , January 8, 2007, accessed January 31, 2009
  3. ↑ a b c d Tim Golden: In US Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths In: New York Times , May 20, 2005, accessed February 1, 2009
  4. ↑ Tom Lasseter, on McClatchy Newspapers : Day 2: Soldiers blame lack of training, support for Bagram abuse ( Memento June 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), June 16, 2008, accessed April 28, 2009
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Eric Schmitt: Afghan Prison Poses Problem in Overhaul of Detainee Policy In: New York Times , January 27, 2009, accessed January 30, 2009
  6. ↑ a b Tom Lasseter: Day 2: US abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases ( Memento June 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), on: McClatchy Newspapers , June 16, 2008, accessed June 25, 2009
  7. ↑ a b c d Charlie Savage: Obama Upholds Detainee Policy in Afghanistan , New York Times , February 21, 2009, accessed February 22, 2009
  8. ↑ a b Eric Schmitt, Tim Golden: US Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan , in: New York Times , May 17, 2008 ( online ), accessed February 19, 2009
  9. ↑ Tim Golden, in New York Times : Times Topics - Bagram Detention Center (Afghanistan) , January 16, 2008 ( online ), accessed February 22, 2009
  10. ↑ a b c d e Matthias Gebauer: US military prison Bagram - test case for Obama's anti-terror course In: Spiegel Online , January 27, 2009 ( online ), accessed on January 30, 2009
  11. ^ A b c d e f Alissa J. Rubin: US Readies New Facility for Afghan Detainees , on New York Times website, November 16, 2009, accessed November 16, 2009
  12. ↑ a b c d Tim Golden, Eric Schmitt: A Growing Afghan Prison Rivals Bleak Guantánamo , on the New York Times website, February 26, 2006, accessed November 16, 2009
  13. ^ Claus Christian Malzahn : Taxi in the death. Documentary on US torture. In: Spiegel Online , May 3, 2007 ( online ), accessed on February 1, 2009
  14. ↑ Ian Pannell: Ex-detainees allege Bagram abuse , on: BBC News website, June 24, 2009, accessed June 25, 2009
  15. ↑ a b International Committee of the Red Cross: US detention related to the fight against terrorism - the role of the ICRC , on: ICRC website, April 3, 2009 ( online ), accessed April 30, 2009
  16. ↑ Alexander Richter, on tagesschau.de : Torture prison in Afghanistan - German investigations in Bagram? , June 22, 2006 ( online (tagesschau.de archive)), accessed on April 3, 2009
  17. ↑ Press office of the Federal Criminal Police Office, on presseportal.de: BKA: Federal Criminal Police Office did not question any suspects in Bagram , July 7, 2006 ( online  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to instructions and then remove this notice. ), accessed on April 4, 2009@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.presseportal.de  
  18. ↑ Bush: Geneva treaty applies to Taliban detainees , on CNN , February 7, 2002, accessed November 1, 2009
  19. ↑ http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB127/02.02.07.pdf (PDF file; 129 kB), February 7, 2002, accessed on November 1, 2009
  20. ^ A b c d Eric Schmitt: US to Expand Detainee Review in Afghan Prison , on the New York Times website, September 13, 2009, accessed November 1, 2009
  21. ^ Matthias Gebauer, in Spiegel Online : Bagram Prison Camp - Obama continues tough Bush course, February 21, 2009 ( online ), accessed on February 21, 2009
  22. ↑ Charlie Savage, " Detention at Afghan Base Is Subject to US Courts " in: New York Times, April 2, 2009, accessed April 3, 2009
  23. ↑ FindLaw , on findlaw.com : Foreign Nationals Captured Abroad and Detained in a Third Country as Enemy Combatants For an Extended Period Time Can Seek Habeas Relief in Federal Court , April 2, 2009 ( online ), accessed April 3, 2009
  24. ↑ Spiegel Online Interview by Tina Foster: US prison Bagram - “There is no difference between Bush and Obama in prison camps” , on Spiegel Online , September 21, 2009, accessed on November 1, 2009
  25. ↑ Eric Schmitt, US Moves to Overhaul Jails That Breed Insurgents in Afghanistan , on the New York Times website, October 7, 2009, accessed November 1, 2009
  26. ↑ http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-obtains-list-bagram-detainees
  27. ↑ Hubert Gude: TERRORISM: As once on September 11th . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 2012 ( online ).
  28. ↑ Islamist: Terror suspect Sidiqi is back in Germany. In: Spiegel Online . April 22, 2011. Retrieved June 9, 2018 .
  29. ↑ Holger Schmidt
  30. ^ Settlement in dispute over US military prison Bagram. In: ORF . March 9, 2012, accessed March 9, 2012 .
  31. ^ Afghans take control of Bagram
  32. ↑ Bagram now completely under Kabul's control nzz.ch, March 25, 2013

Coordinates: 34 ° 56 ′ 24.1 ″  N , 69 ° 15 ′ 14 ″  E