| Return to
opening page |
. |
|
Riots kill fourteen in Afghan jailFourteen inmates are reported to have been killed in a riot at an Afghan prison which the US wants to use to house prisoners currently held at Bagram air base. Pul-i-Charkhi jail, on the outskirts of the capital Kabul, was overrun by inmates on Saturday night who took control of part of the prison. The United States has given the Kabul government ten million dollars to build an extra wing on the jail to hold inmates from the US high security camp at Bagram in Afghanistan. Many of them were originally destined for Guantanamo Bay, but that practice has now ended. Hunger strike Inmates at Pul-i-Charkhi have been holding a long-running hunger strike about conditions in the top security jail, which holds 2000 people and was built in the 1970s. One prisoner, interviewed by a television station in Afghanistan, claimed that the rioting has led to the deaths of 14 people and injured 36, and that the violence is still ongoing. He also said that two female prison guards were being held hostage. Afghanistan analyst and journalist Ahmed Rashid says if the rioting continues, Washington may have to rethink plans to have an extra wing built and transfer prisoners there: "The idea that you can be moving all the bad guys into Pul-i-Charkhi, then hand over the keys to the Afghan security forces to look after them is going to have to be changed by the Americans. First of all, there are terrible conditions in Bagram, we know there that the prisoners - 500 of them - are being kept in this shed, basically, in open chained cells and they're living there under very cramped conditions." "They're tortured and at least two people we know have died under torture in Bagram, and now that the Bagram prisoners are no longer being shifted to Guantanamo, the numbers in Bagram are increasing enormously. There were never more than a hundred or two hundred prisoners there, there are now maybe up to 600 prisoners, we don't know the truth." Bagram Recent newspaper reports suggest some prisoners may have been held in Bagram for up to three years without access to lawyers or tribunals. The facility used to hold the detainees at Bagram is a former machine shop and was never designed for long term use. But with international criticism of the US detention policy coming thick and fast, Ahmed Rashid says Washington is running out of options. "I think if this mutiny [in Pul-i-Charkhi] goes on for many more days, the news is bound to filter through to Bagram. There have been hunger strikes and protests in Bagram, there has been a very serious hunger strike in Guantanamo Bay, and if this kind of information spreads out… it could well lead to a very severe reaction there amongst the prisoners." "[…] This really has to be addressed now by more than just putting a plaster over it. It has to be addressed seriously by the Bush administration." RN 27-02-2006
See also:Guantanamo Bay The UN report on Guantanamo Rendition On calling Gitmo a Gulag Is terrorism legislation the answer? |
||
| meditations |
top |
|