FOCUS: OPINION
Guantanamo’s ‘more evil twin’?
By Andrew Wander
While Obama concentrates on closing Guantanamo, rights activists say the US-run prison at Bagram continues to operate ‘in the shadows’ [EPA]
It is a US-run prison built from scratch on an US military base to hold “enemy combatants” captured in the so-called “war on terror”.
Those imprisoned there have never been charged with a crime, nor do they have any meaningful way of challenging their detention.
The inmates allege abuse at the hands of their captors, ranging from sleep deprivation to brutal beatings. And no, it is not Guantanamo Bay.
The Bagram Theatre Internment Facility lies on a sprawling US military complex, 40km northeast of the Afghan capital Kabul. It holds almost three times as many prisoners as Guantanamo and, as its better-known Cuban counterpart prepares to close, the Bagram prison is about to double in size. Full article.