'Afghan Guantanamo'
January 6, 2012
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has demanded the handover of Afghan citizens from a US detention center north of Kabul within a month.
In a recent statement, Karzai referred to a report citing "many cases of violations of the Afghan Constitution and other applicable laws of the country, the relevant international conventions and human rights."
Rights violations
The Parwan Detention Facility is located inside the US army base at Bagram. It made headlines in 2002 after two inmates died within two weeks after being chained up, beaten and deprived of sleep. Since then, some have referred to it as the "Afghan Guantanamo" in reference to the US military prison in Cuba.
It is not known how many people are currently being held at the facility but rights groups have lambasted it for the treatment of prisoners there, some of whom are arbitrarily detained. Various groups claim some of the detainees are taunted, made to take off their clothes and kept in solitary confinement.
"According to Afghan law, a detainee could be held only for 10 months and the prisoner should be sent to court within that timeframe, but we saw prisoners spending as many as two years without any charge," Abdul Qadir Adalatkhwa, a former deputy justice minister, told German news agency DPA.
Not only US abuses
In was agreed in 2010 that Parwan prison would be handed over to Afghan forces within a year in a deal signed with the ISAF (NATO's International Security Assistance Force).
But rights organizations and Western officials have expressed concerns about the way such detention centers are run by Afghan authorities.
A report released by the United Nations in October 2011 found cases of torture and maltreatment among prisoners - some of them children - detained in facilities run by the Afghan Interior Ministry.
Recent string of demands
Karzai's demands for a handover on Thursday came not long after word of negotiations between the US and the Taliban to set up an office for peace negotiations in Qatar became public. The alleged negotiations took place with exclusion of the Afghan government. That prompted Afghanistan's High Peace Council to draw up the government's demands in an 11-point note at the end of last December. One of the demands calls for the exclusion of foreign powers in the peace talks with the Taliban without Kabul's consent.
Other demands recently set by Kabul include an end to night raids by international troops in Afghanistan and a general handover of control over detainees to Afghan forces. International troops are due to withdraw from Afghanistan in two years but the insurgency in many parts of the country is still going strong.
Author: Sarah Berning (AP, AFP, dpa)
Editor: Darren Mara