Ex-detainees allege Bagram abuse
by Ian Pannell, BBC News, June 24, 2009
Allegations of abuse and neglect at a US detention facility in Afghanistan have been uncovered by the BBC.
A number of former detainees have alleged they were beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened with dogs at the Bagram military base.
The BBC spoke to 27 ex-inmates around the country over two months. Just two said they had been treated well.
The Pentagon has denied the charges and insisted that all inmates in the facility are treated humanely.
All the men were asked the same questions and they were all interviewed in isolation.
Bagram: The new Guantanamo
by Clive Stafford Smith, The Independent, June 24, 2009The BBC’s revelations about prisoner abuse at the US prison at Bagram airforce base in Afghanistan are the latest in a long line of revelations about abuse at US prisons around the world.
President Obama told us that this sort of thing has stopped. Well, it hasn’t.
Sadly, the Obama administration is up to the former administration’s familiar tricks, attempting to block the world from the truth. In April, a federal judge in Washington DC ordered that prisoners in Bagram should be allowed counsel, and the right to be heard in court; the Obama administration refused to comply, and appealed the judgment. People being beaten up in Bagram should, apparently, grin and bear it.