Afghan Secret Prisons May Be Worse Than Guantanamo

When US President Obama was elected to office, one of the planks in his platform was the vow to close the offshore prison at Guantanamo, Cuba. Publicity that leaked from there revealed routine torture and mistreatment of the prisoners. Now there comes the acknowledgement that secret prisons run by the US military in Afghanistan may be worse than Gitmo.

While the military previously denied such facilities existed in Afghanistan, they have now admitted to their presence according to the Russian news agency RT.

"There are roughly 20 secret detention sites all run by the US military, with one being run the America’s elite counterterrorism unit at the Joint Special Operations Command at Bagram Air Base where high-value targets from within the Taliban, al-Qaida or other militant groups are held and interrogated."RT

Apparently, these facilities are not classified as prisons, but are 'temporary holding centers' and prisoners are not held beyond 14 days unless they are held longer. Just to keep things in perspective, Bagram prison is now called a detention centre. Kind of like what happens when you misbehave in class and are given some maths homework to do.

Guantanamo Prison has received a great deal of publicity over the past decade, but it is not alone in holding people incommunicado and denying them basic human rights.

Amnesty International has been publicizing the existence of a network of secret prisons where detainees are disappeared and may be subject to mistreatment. They have named Lithuania, Egypt, Poland and Romania as countries that likely hold prisoners for the American authorities.

By definition, secret prisons remain difficult to document. The organization Human Rights Now has added to the locations where alleged US secret prisons exist: the island of Diego-Garcia, Djibouti, Thailand, Jordan and Morocco.

The UN passed a resolution in 1992 to address the kidnapping of people and transferring them to secret locations: The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance When disappearances of public figures like international artist Ai Weiwei or Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo, into the murky justice system in China, it makes for a toothless protest when the US diplomats speak up.