Parwan Detention Facility

A sally port at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Captives at Bagram are kept in cells holding dozens of men. Captives being taken from a cell, or returned to the cell, are first locked into the "sally port", one at a time.

The Bagram Threater Internment Facility is the most recent name for a controversial American detention facility in Afghanistan. It originally was intended as a temporary location, but it now has lasted longer and accumulated more detainees than the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. When discussing these detainees the Bush administration avoids the label "prisoner of war," preferring the classifications of "enemy combatants," "unlawful enemy combatants," or "unprivileged belligerents." Many of these prisoners have not been formally charged, and some have been subject to severe abuse.

Physical site

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan the Soviets built a large military airfield outside Bagram. The airfield included large hangars that fell into disrepair when the Soviets were ousted.

When the Americans and their local allies ousted the Taliban American forces took possession of the former Soviet base. The American's didn't need the volume of hangar space, so a detention facility was built inside large unused hangars.

Like the first facilities built at Guantanamo's Camp X-Ray the cells were built of wire mesh. However only captives held in solitary confinement have a cell of their own. The other captives share larger open cells with other captives.

According to some accounts captives were provided with shared buckets for their feces and urine, and did not have access to running water.

According to some accounts, although captives share these cells with dozens of other captives they are not allowed to speak with one another, or even to look at one another.

During an interview on PBS, Chris Hogan, a former interrogator at Bagram, described the prisoner's cells in early 2002.

"I can't speak to what the conditions may be like now. But in my tenure, the prison population lived in an abandoned Soviet warehouse. The warehouse had a cement floor and it was a huge square-footage area.

On the floor of that, what must have been some sort of an airplane hangar, six prison cages were erected, which were divided by concertina wire ... Those prison cages had a wooden floor, a platform built above the cement floor of the hangar. Each prisoner had a bunch of blankets, a small mat, and in the back of each one of those cages, was a makeshift toilet, the same type of toilet that the soldiers used, which was a 50-gallon drum, halved with diesel fuel put in the bottom of it and a wooden kind of seat to that platform ... It's very similar, incidentally, to the conditions that the soldiers lived in; almost identical."

Torture and prisoner abuse

Main article: Bagram torture and prisoner abuse

Two captives are known to have been beaten to death by GIs manning the facility, in December 2002.

Captives who were confined to both Bagram and Guantanamo have recounted that, while in Bagram, they were warned that if they didn't cooperate more fully, they would be sent to a worse site, in Cuba. Captives who have compared the two camps have said that conditions were far worse in Bagram.

High profile escapes

When GIs who were implicated in the December 2002 homicides were about to face courts martial there was an escape, and at least one of the prosecution's witnesses escaped, and was thus unable to testify.

Legal status of detainees

Although the Bush administration initially argued that detainees could not access the US legal system, the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Rasul v. Bush confirmed that captives in US jurisdiction did indeed have the right to access US courts. Rasul v. Bush determined that the Executive Branch did not have the authority, under the United States Constitution, to suspend the right for detainees to submit writes of habeas corpus.

Another consequence of the Supreme Court's ruling in Rasul v. Bush was the authorization of the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants to convene Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

The DoD had to convene Combatant Status Review Tribunals for every captive in Guantanamo Bay. The Summary of Evidence memos prepared for the captives Tribunals all re-iterated that the Tribunals were merely reviewing the information that had lead to the catpive initially being classified as an "enemy combatant" during earlier determinations.

The combatant status of captives taken in other conflicts was determined through Army Regulation 190-8 Tribunals. Army Regulation 190-8 laid out the rules through which officers of the United States Armed Forces complied with the USA's obligations under the Geneva Conventions to convene a "competent tribunal" to determine the status for every captive whose status was in doubt.

An article by Eliza Griswold, published in the The New Republic, stated that the other captives the USA holds might have an Enemy Combatant Review Board convened:

"But, for all these changes, the growing detainee population still lives in overcrowded cages. Prisoners don't even have the limited access to lawyers available to prisoners in Guantánamo. Nor do they have the right to Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which Guantánamo detainees won in the 2004 Supreme Court ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Instead, if a combat commander chooses, he can convene an Enemy Combatant Review Board (ecrb), at which the detainee has no right to a personal advocate, no chance to speak in his own defense, and no opportunity to review the evidence against him. The detainee isn't even allowed to attend. And, thanks to such limited access to justice, many former detainees say they have no idea why they were either detained or released.

Captives reported to have been held in Bagram

Captives reported to have been held in Bagram

Guantanamo ISN	Name	Notes
762	Abaidullah	Reported abuse in Bagram to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal in Guantanamo Bay detention camp|Guantanamo]].
307	Abd Al Nasir Mohammed Abd Al Qadir Khantumani	Sent to Bagram after several days of beatings by Afghan solciers in Gardez.. Eventually sent to Guantanamo.
489	Abd Al Rahim Abdul Rassak Janko	Passed directly from Taliban custody American custody. Taliban believed he was an American spy.
686	Abdel Ghalib Ahmad Hakim	Testified to his Combatatant Status Review Tribunal that he had spent months in detention in Pakistani custody, and then in American custody, in Kandahar and Bagram, prior to being transferred to Cuba. He said none of his interrogators had asked him questions that implied they thought he was affiliated with Al Qaida until after he came to Cuba.
	Abdul Al Salam Al Hilal
963	Abdul Bagi	Testified, to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal, that he learned,seven days after his capture, in Bagram, that he was accused of tossing a rifle down a well, Would have arrived in Bagram on February 17 2003. Eventually transferred to Guantanamo.
502	Abdul Bin Mohammed Bin Abess Ourgy
1032	Abdul Ghaffar
954	Abdul Ghafour
1007	Abdul Halim Sadiqi
	Abdul Jabar	A 35-year-old taxi driver who testified he was held near Dilawar and experienced similar abuse.
1002	Abdul Matin
874	Abdul Nasir
306	Abdul Salam Zaeef	Former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. Reports abuse in Bagram. Currently under house arrest.
753	Abdul Zahir
	Abdur Rahim	One of the passengers in Dilawar's jitney taxi. Testified to the same kind of abuse that killed Dilawar. Eventually transferred to Guantanamo -- but his name is missing from the official list of Guantanamo captives.
	Abdul Wahid	Beaten to death in Bagram on November 6, 2003.
332	Abdullah Al Tayabi
	Abdullah Shahab
452	Abu Bakir Jamaludinovich
	Abu Yahia al-Libi
	Adel Hassan Hamad
	Ahmaddullah	Captured with five other men from the village of Kirmati, near Gardez city in late May 2002. and his brother
845	Akhtar Mohammed
	Amanullah	Captured with five other men from the village of Kirmati, near Gardez city in late May 2002. and his brother
	Amanullah	A veteran of struggle against Afghanistan's Soviet invaders, in the 1980s, captured in early 2004, who reports he never learned why he was apprehended. Claims he was held for a year in solitary confinement in Bagram.
948	Anwar Khan (Guantanamo detainee 948)
	Asim Thahit Abdullah Al Khalaqi
	Atag Ali Abdoh Al-Haj
782	Awal Gul
	Richard Belmar
975	Bostan Karim
	Dilawar	Beaten to death in Bagram on December 10, 2002.
680	Emad Abdalla Hassan
888	Esmatulla
688	Fahmi Abdullah Ahmed
987	Ghalib
516	Ghanim Abdul Rahman Al Harbi
1021	Gul Chaman
907	Habib Rahman
	Habibullah	Beaten to death in Bagram on December 4, 2002.
1001	Hafizullah Shabaz Khail
1119	Hamidullah
	Hakkim Shah	A 32-year-old farmer who testified he was held near Dilawar and experienced similar abuse.
940	Hassan Adel Hussein
94	Ibrahim Daif Allah Neman Al Sehli
	Jan Baz Khan	A militia leader who captured and turned over Dilawar, Habibullah, Khandan Kadir. and half a dozen other captives. Had the security contract for Firebase Salerno. Turned over suspects following a rocket attack on December 1 2002, only to fall under suspicion of being behind the attack himself. The nephew and protege of a powerful militia leader named Pacha Khan Zadran.
1095	Jumma Jan
586	Karam Khamis Sayd Khamsan
	Khalid Mahomoud Abdul Wahab Al Asmr
831	Khandan Kadir	A pharmacist who was hired by the new government of Afghanistan's to be Khowst's regional director of the anti-narcotics branch of its new Intelligence service. Denounced and captured by Jan Baz, a local militia leader who was himself captured by the Americans, four months later. Eventually transferred to Guantanamo.
	Khoja Mohammad	Captured with five other men from the village of Kirmati, near Gardez city in late May 2002. and his brother
	Lufti Bin Swei Lagha
1052	Mahbub Rahman	A teenage student. captured with, Azimullah, Mohammed Salim and Rahman Tulah, accused of helping guide fighters who launched a rocket attack on Firebase Salerno. Eventually transferred to Guantanamo.
519	Mahrar Rafat Al Quwari
939	Mammar Ameur
558	Moazzam Begg
909	Mohabet Khan
333	Mohamed Atiq Awayd Al Harbi
	Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah
900	Mohamed Jawad
7	Mohammad Fazil
849	Mohammed Nasim
681	Mohammed Mohammed Hassen
1008	Mohammed Mustafa Sohail
	Mohammad Naim	Captured with five other men from the village of Kirmati, near Gardez city in late May 2002. and his brother
955	Mohammed Quasam
	Mohammed Salim	Captured with Mahbub Rahman, Azimullah and Rahman Tulah. Mahbub Rahman requested a statement from him, at his Tribunal. He was told that although he was still in US custody, in Bagram, his testimony was not reasonably available.
532	Mohammed Sharif
1004	Mohammed Yacoub
	Mubibbullah Khan	A District Chief in Zabul Province who was apprehended in September 2005, accused of being a Taliban informant. Lived out most of the Taliban's administration in exile in Pakistan.
839	Musab Omar Ali Al Mudwani
	Naqeebyllah Shaheen Shahwali Zair Mohammed
967	Naserullah
1019	Nasibullah
	Omar Deghayes
	Parkhudin	Testified before the inquiry into Dilawar's death that he was suspended from the ceiling for 8 to 10 days.
591	Qari Esmhatulla
835	Rasool Shahwali Zair Mohammed Mohammed
945	Said Amir Jan
1035	Sada Jan
1056	Said Mohammed
1154	Said Mohammed Ali Shah
311	Saiid Farhi
	Samoud Khan
914	Shardar Khan
944	Sharifullah
899	Shawali Khan
834	Shahwali Zair Mohammed Shaheen Naqeebyllah
	Sherbatp	Captured with five other men from the village of Kirmati, near Gardez city in late May 2002. and his brother
933	Swar Khan
902	Taj Mohammed
	Tariq Mahmoud Ahmed Al Sawah
	Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil
550	Walid Said Bin Said Zaid
	Zakim Shah	A 20-year-old farmer who testified he was held near Dilawar and experienced similar abuse.
	Zalmay Shah

External links

• Ron Synovitz (Thursday, October 5, 2006). "Afghanistan: Kabul Seeks Release Of More Bagram Detainees". Radio Free Europe. Retrieved 2007-09-24. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)