In 2005, The New York Times obtained a 2,000-page United States Army investigatory report concerning the homicides of two unarmed civilian Afghan prisoners by U.S. military personnel in December 2002 at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility (also Bagram Collection Point or B.C.P., now the Parwan Detention Facility) in Bagram, Afghanistan, and general treatment of prisoners. Two prisoners, Habibullah and Dilawar, were repeatedly chained to the ceiling and beaten, resulting in their deaths. Military coroners ruled that both prisoners' deaths were homicides. Autopsies revealed severe trauma to both prisoners' legs, describing the trauma as comparable to being run over by a bus. Seven soldiers were charged in 2005.
Hajimumin, another prisoner, told Al Jazeera that they tied them to chairs and applied electric shocks for 30 seconds a time for torture purposes.
The torture and homicides allegedly took place at the military detention center known as the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, which had been built by the Soviet Union as an aircraft machine shop during the SovietâÂÂAfghan War (1980âÂÂ1989), which was a concrete-and-sheet metal facility that was retrofitted with wire pens and wooden isolation cells; the center was part of Bagram Airfield in Bagram, near Charikar in Parwan Province, Afghanistan.
In January 2010, the American military released the names of 645 detainees held at the main detention center at Bagram, modifying its long-held position against publishing such information. This was to comply with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in September 2009 by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose lawyers had also demanded detailed information about conditions, rules, and regulations at the center.
Habibullah died on December 4, 2002. Several U.S. soldiers hit the chained man with so-called "peroneal strikes", or severe blows to the side of the leg above the knee. This incapacitates the leg by hitting the common peroneal nerve. According to The New York Times:
Dilawar, who died on December 10, 2002, was a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver and farmer who weighed 122 pounds and was described by his interpreters as neither violent nor aggressive.
When beaten, he repeatedly cried "Allah". The outcry appears to have amused U.S. military personnel. The act of striking him to provoke a scream of "Allah" eventually "became a kind of running joke", according to one of the MP's. "People kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah'", he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."
The Times reported that:
Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani citizen educated in the United States as a neuroscientist, was suspected of the attempted assault and killing of U.S. personnel in Afghanistan. She disappeared in 2003 with her three children. She was allegedly detained for five years at Bagram with her children; she was the only female prisoner. She was known to the male detainees as "Prisoner 650". The media dubbed her the "Mata Hari of al-Qaida" or the "Grey Lady of Bagram". Yvonne Ridley says that Siddiqui is the "Grey Lady of Bagram" â a ghostly female detainee, who kept prisoners awake "with her haunting sobs and piercing screams". In 2005, male prisoners were so agitated by her plight, Ridley said, that they went on a hunger strike for six days. Siddiqui's family maintains that she was abused at Bagram.
Mohamed immigrated to the U.K. from Ethiopia in 1994 and sought asylum. In 2001, he converted to Islam and travelled to Pakistan, followed by Afghanistan, to see if the Taliban-run Afghanistan was "a good Islamic country". U.S. authorities believed that he was a would-be bomber who fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistani immigration officials arrested him at the airport in April 2002 before he returned to the U.K., and Mohamed has said officials have used evidence gained through torture in sites in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004, before he was "secretly rendered" to the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. In October 2008, the U.S. dropped all charges against him. Mohamed was reported as very ill as a result of a hunger strike in the weeks before his release. In February 2009, Mohamed was interviewed by Moazzam Begg, a fellow Bagram detainee and founder of CagePrisoners, an organization to help released detainees. Mohamad identified a photo of Aafia Siddiqui as the woman whom he and other male detainees had seen at Bagram, known as "Prisoner 650".
Mohammed Sulaymon Barre, a Somali refugee who worked for a funds transfer company, described his Bagram interrogation as "torture". Barre said he was picked up and thrown around the interrogation room when he would not confess to a false allegation. He was put into an isolation chamber that was maintained at a piercingly cold temperature for several weeks, and deprived of sufficient rations during this period. As a result of this treatment, his hands and feet swelled, causing him such excruciating pain that he could not stand up.
Zalmay Shah, a citizen of Afghanistan, alleges mistreatment during detention at Bagram air base. An article published in the May 2, 2007, issue of The New Republic contained excerpts from an interview with Shah. He said he had originally cooperated closely with the Americans. He had worked with an American he knew only as "Tony" in the roundup of former members of the Taliban. According to the article:
Shah was eventually released.
Others include Mohammed Salim and Moazzam Begg.
In October 2004, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command concluded that there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offenses in the Dilawar case, ranging from dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter. Fifteen of the soldiers were also cited for probable criminal responsibility in the Habibullah case. Seven soldiers have been charged so far. According to an article published in the October 15, 2004, by The New York Times, 28 soldiers were under investigation. Some of the soldiers were reservists in the 377th Military Police Company under the command of Captain Christopher M. Beiring. The rest were in the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion under the command of Captain Carolyn A. Wood.
On October 14, 2004, the Criminal Investigation Command forwarded its report from its investigation to the commanders of 28 soldiers.
As of January 20, 2012, 17 soldiers have been charged (15 of which listed).
Some interrogators involved in this incident were sent to Iraq, and were assigned to Abu Ghraib prison. PFC Corsetti was fined and demoted while assigned to Abu Ghraib for not having permission to conduct an interrogation.
A May 2005 editorial of The New York Times noted parallels between military behavior at Bagram and the later abuse and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq:
Human Rights Watch has reported that detainees at Bagram are held in harsh conditions without access to due process, including torture, sleep deprivation, shackles, and other harsh treatment similar to other reports about military prisons. Amnesty International has expressed concern about the transfer of prisoners from Bagram to Afghan prisons, describing it as "exposing prisoners to torture and ill-treatment." The ACLU has stressed that the abuse at Bagram is systematic and requires full disclosure of prison conditions and accountability.
The United States government, through the Department of State submits periodic reports to the United Nations Committee Against Torture. In October 2005, the report focused on the pretrial detention of terrorism suspects in the war on terrorism, including those held at Guantanamo Bay detention camp and in Afghanistan. This report was particularly significant as it marked the first official response from the U.S. government to allegations of widespread abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan and facilities such as Guantanamo Bay. The report denied the allegations.
In 2010, Justice Project Pakistan began advocating for the repatriation of prisoners subjected to torture at Bagram. As a result, the U.S. government ultimately allowed all known prisoners to be return home by 2014. In the same year, the Bagram detention facility was officially transferred to Afghan authorities as part of the broader U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The transfer was seen as part of broader efforts to address international criticism of U.S. detention practices. Although the formal handover occurred in 2013, the U.S. maintained some level of involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan until the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2021.
The McCain Amendment, part of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, was an amendment to the United States Senate Department of Defence Authorization bill. Officially designated as Amendment #1977 it focused on (1) adherence to the U.S. Army Field Manual and (2) the prohibition of Cruel, Inhumane, Degrading Treatment, amendment #1977, and also known as the McCain Amendment 1977.
Introduced by Senator John McCain, the amendment aimed to ensure humane treatment of detainees. On October 5, 2005, the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly voted 90âÂÂ9. It was later signed into law by President George W. Bush, reinforcing the U.S. commitment to humane interrogation and detention practises.
According to BBC interviews and reports, some 27 former detainees who were held at Bagram between 2002 and 2008 have claimed to have been subjected to beatings, threats with guns and dogs, extreme cold and heat, sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation. The detainees said none were held without formal charges or trial.
According to an interview with several former prisoners by the Anadolu Agency: One prisoner said that they had not received food for more than three days and were kept in cells with more than 30 people without the possibility of lying down. The sanitary conditions were very poor and the toilets and showers were described as so inadequate that prisoners questioned whether a human being could survive in such conditions. The prisoner had been in prison for more than seven years and had witnessed numerous tortures.
In May 2010, the BBC reported about nine prisoners who "told consistent stories of being held in isolation in cold cells where a light is on all day and night. The men said they had been deprived of sleep by US military personnel there." When the BBC sought information from the International Committee of the Red Cross about this, the ICRC revealed that it had been informed in August 2009, by U.S. authorities that they maintained a second facility at Bagram, commonly known as the Black Jail, where detainees were held in isolation due to "military necessity". This was an exception to the principle of allowing guaranteed access for all prisoners to the International Red Cross.
âÂÂThe release of pictures of Iraqi prisoners has raised concerns among Afghans, fearing the same thing could happen to Afghan prisoners,â Ahmad Zia Langari of the independent Human Rights Commission said. The commission has written to the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Barno, requesting access to all US military holding facilities, including the detention centre at their Bagram airbase headquarters.
Prisoners have said they were beaten by guards with sticks or threatened with dogs, and in some cases deprived of sleep for long periods. Some interviews have reported that prisoners were forced to strip naked in front of female soldiers and threatened with weapons. The use of cold water in winter and extremely high temperatures in summer to create harsh conditions are other allegations made by prisoners.
According to a statement from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union): The organization said the abuses were âÂÂsystemic, not isolatedâ and demanded full disclosure of information about the number of detainees, length of detention, place of release, and legal process. The ACLU stressed that the American people have a right to know what happened at Bagram and that those responsible must be held accountable.
Accredited reports such as Human Rights Watch and the media have provided further details about the deaths of two prisoners: Two Afghans died in Bagram custody in December 2002, and the cause of death of one of them was declared to be beatings, according to the medical examiner's report. An official investigation was conducted, but the results were never fully published.
A Guardian/McClatchy investigation found: Of the 41 former detainees interviewed, 28 said they had been beaten or otherwise abused. Many of these detainees had no significant connection to the 9/11 attacks or terrorist groups. Administrative orders and military regulations to limit abuse were not being implemented in practice at Bagram.
Analysis has shown that the treatment of prisoners at Bagram may be in violation of the 1949 Geneva Convention, which prohibits torture and degrading treatment, while at the time the US government refused to grant many prisoners of war status.
Independent reports have shown that in the early years of Bagram detention, specific methods of torture and psychological degradation were used: Detainees were forced to stand or kneel for long periods of time during interrogations in bright light and were deprived of sleep. Detainees have said that they were held for weeks without rest and in bright light, causing physical and psychological harm. These methods bore similarities to those reported at other facilities, such as those in Iraq.
The facility officially shut down on December 10, 2014.
The 2007 documentary Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), directed by American filmmaker Alex Gibney, focuses on the murder of Dilawar by US troops at Bagram.