In November 2009, both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported on the existence of a prison near Bagram air base, called the Black Jail.
KABUL, Afghanistan — An American military detention camp in Afghanistan is still holding inmates, sometimes for weeks at a time, without access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to human rights researchers and former detainees held at the site on the Bagram Air Base.
The site, known to detainees as the black jail, consists of individual windowless concrete cells, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day. In interviews, former detainees said that their only human contact was at twice-daily interrogation sessions.
“The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place,” said Hamidullah, a spare-parts dealer in Kandahar who said he was detained there in June.
Afghans Detail Detention in ‘Black Jail’ at U.S. Base, New York Times
KABUL -- Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep and held in solitary confinement in concrete cells for at least two weeks while undergoing daily interrogation about their alleged links to the Taliban.
...
The holding center described by the teenagers appeared to have been a facility run by U.S. Special Operations forces that is separate from the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, the main American-run prison, which holds about 700 detainees. The teenagers' descriptions of a holding area on a different part of the Bagram base are consistent with the accounts of two other former detainees, who say they endured similar mistreatment, but not beatings, while being held last year at what Afghans call Bagram's "black" prison.
2 Afghans allege abuse at U.S. site, Washington Post
The Black Jail is a different facility than the old Bagram prison. It is also different than the new larger Bagram prison, called the Parwan Detention Facility, which opened in December 2009.
The cells are very small.
He said he lived in a small concrete cell that was slightly longer than the length of his body.
And prisoner accounts frequently call the jail especially harsh. Abdul Rashid, a 15-year-old or younger, had spent time at Pul-i-Charkhi prison, which would be no playground. Of his interrogation at the Black Jail, he says
That was the hardest time I have ever had in my life. It was better to just kill me. But they would not kill me.
Hamidullah, an auto parts dealer from Kandahar, says
The black jail was the most dangerous and fearful place. It is a place where everybody is afraid. In the black jail, they can do anything to detainees.
Malik Mohammad Hassan, a tribal elder from near Jalalabad says
This is something nobody can bear. It's extraordinary. They treated us like wild animals.
BBC Report
In April 2010, the BBC reported on the prison.
"They call it the Black Hole," said Sher Agha who spent six days in the facility last autumn.
"When they released us they told us we should not tell our stories to outsiders because that will harm us."
Sher Agha and others we interviewed complained their cells were very cold.
"When I wanted to sleep and started shivering with cold I started reciting the holy Koran," he said.
Afghans 'abused at secret prison' at Bagram airbase, BBC
The BBC was allowed a one hour visit to the prison, and told of what they saw.
In the new jail, prisoners were being moved around in wheelchairs with goggles and headphones on.
The goggles were blacked out, and the purpose of the headphones was to block out all sound. Each prisoner was handcuffed and had their legs shackled.
Prisoners are kept in 56 cells, which the prisoners refer to as "cages". The front of the cells are made of mesh, the ceiling is clear, and the other three walls are solid.
U.S. officials denied the existence of the facility the BBC had seen.
The military categorically denied the existence of a secret detention site.
"I've never heard of it. This is the only detention facility in Afghanistan" said Vice Admiral Robert Harward who is in charge of the Detention Facility in Parwan.
Atlantic Report
In May 2010, Marc Ambinder reported, from unnamed sources, that the Black Jail was run by the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) runs a classified interrogation facility for high-value detainees inside Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, defense and administration officials said, and prisoners there are sometimes subject to tougher interrogation methods than those used elsewhere.
Inside the Secret Interrogation Facility at Bagram, Atlantic
Ambinder also published
a photograph of the prison walls.
AP Report
In April 2011, officials admitted to the existence of the prison, to Kimberly Dozier at the Associated Press.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The CIA's infamous secret network of "black site" interrogation centers is gone. But suspected terrorists in Afghanistan are being held and interrogated for weeks at temporary sites, including one run by the elite special operations forces at Bagram Air Base, according to U.S. officials who revealed details of the detention network to The Associated Press.
The Pentagon has previously denied operating secret jails in Afghanistan, although human rights groups and former detainees have described the facilities. U.S. military and other government officials confirmed that the detention centers exist but described them as temporary holding pens whose primary purpose is to gather intelligence.
Afghanistan Secret Prisons Confirmed By U.S., AP
Nation Report
In February 2010, Anand Gopal reported on captures and detentions in Afghanistan. Gopal tells the story of Noor Muhammad, a doctor, who was taken to the Black Jail.
One day two years ago, US forces came to get Noor Muhammad outside the town of Kajaki in the southern province of Helmand. Muhammad, a physician, was running a clinic that served all comers, including the Taliban. The soldiers raided his clinic and his home, killing five people (including two patients) and detaining both his father and him. The next day villagers found the handcuffed body of Muhammad's father, apparently killed by a gunshot.
The soldiers took Muhammad to the Black Jail. "It was a tiny, narrow corridor, with lots of cells on both sides and a big steel gate and bright lights," he said. "We didn't know when it was night and when it was day." He was held in a windowless concrete room in solitary confinement. Soldiers regularly dragged him by his neck and refused him food and water. They accused him of providing medical care to the insurgents, to which he replied, "I am a doctor. It's my duty to provide care to every human being who comes to my clinic, whether they are Taliban or from the government."
America's Secret Afghan Prisons, The Nation
Open Society Foundations Report
In October 2010, the Open Society Foundations issued a 16-page report on conditions and treatment at the Black Jail.
In July 2010, the Open Society Foundations conducted research into the conditions of confinement at the facility to determine if the allegations in the media were ongoing and widespread. The Open Society Foundations interviewed over 20 former detainees, 18 of whom stated that they passed through the facility. Of these 18, half claimed to have been detained as recently as 2009 or 2010 while the facility was Based on those interviews, the vast majority of the detainees repeatedly and consistently described the following types of treatment, many of which appear inconsistent with specific U.S. military rules on detention:
- Exposure to excessive cold
- Exposure to excessive light
- Inappropriate and inadequate food
- Inadequate bedding and blanketing
- Disorientation and lack of natural light
- Denial of religious duties
- Lack of physical exercise
- Nudity upon arrival
- Detrimental impact from an accumulation of confinement conditions
- Facility rules and relevant Geneva Conventions rules/rights not posted
- Lack of transparency and denial of International Committee of the Red Cross access to detainees
Given the consistency of the accounts, the Open Society Foundations believes these are genuine areas of concern, and not outliers, that run counter to U.S. rules on detainee treatment and the administration’s strong public support for Common Article 3 of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, which prohibits “cruel treatment and torture,” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”
Confinement Conditions at a U.S. Screening Facility on Bagram Air Base, Open Society Foundations
About the U.S. secrecy of the facility, Open Society Foundation points out that it is well known in Afghanistan.
Our research found that, although the specific details about the facility have remained largely unknown to the media and international human rights groups, the facility is well-known and discussed among Afghans.
The New Afghanistan Analysts Network Report
On Thursday, the Afghanistan Analysts Network issued a new report on the Black Jail. The report has a good rundown on the Afghan versus American negotiations and disputes over control of Afghan prisoners held in Afghanistan.
The earlier reports about the Black Jail have a good deal of consistency about conditions of confinement. AAN finds that conditions now are very similar.
From AAN’s admittedly much smaller sample of interviews, it looks as if conditions have not changed at all since 2012. Detainees report not having enough water for drinking, let alone for ablutions, food being inadequate and dry (it sounds like they possibly also get the soldiers’ rations), being kept cold and, most seriously, being severely deprived of sleep.
The ‘Other Guantanamo’ 6: Afghans still struggling for sovereignty at Bagram, Afghanistan Analysts Network
He had come directly to Bagram and spent 17 days in Tor Jail. He said it was like being in a cupboard – two metres long and less in width. He said they gave him just enough food to prevent him from dying – crisps, biscuits, nuts and only one bottle of water in 24 hours, so he wouldn’t go to the toilet frequently.
The person with the most recent direct experience of Tor Jail whom AAN has managed to interview was a young man or about 22 to 23 year years old, clean-shaven and from the east. He was picked up from his home by US forces one night in December 2012 (he alleged that for hours, everyone was kept outside the house, with all the men in the family immersed in cold water in a canal). He said he was held on a US base for three days, before transfer to Tor Jail for 20 days and then to ANDF (“about five minutes drive away”) where he was held for six months (ie he was not found guilty of any crime).