The US military
believes the prison houses some of the most dangerous men on earth, as the
BBC's Yalda Hakim reports.
It is not often that
you are given access to a maximum-security prison. A place where "high
value targets" who are caught on the battlefield are kept.
Bagram detention
facility, on the outskirts of Kabul, has long been considered Afghanistan's
Guantanamo Bay.
It was originally
built and run by the Americans but was handed over to Afghan control last year.
Up until now, no
journalist has been granted this kind of access.
After two years of
negotiating, I was finally given access at a critical turning point in the
prison's history and Afghanistan's future.
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Cell after cell contained men proclaiming
their innocence - telling me they were farmers who got caught up in American
raids on their villages.
The day I arrived at
the prison, the Afghan Review Board (ARB), the committee responsible for the
prisoner issue, had announced that it would be releasing some of the inmates.
The ARB said these men
could not be prosecuted because of a lack of evidence.
The Nato-led
international peacekeeping force (Isaf) quickly came out and slammed the
decision, saying the detainees were dangerous terrorists and had "blood on
their hands".
'Taliban-making
factory'
I wanted to
investigate how Bagram prison had become a toxic issue that threatened to
derail US-Afghan relations.
Initially I was taken
on an orchestrated public relations tour by General Farooq Barakzai, the man in
charge of the detention facility.
Such a tour included
everything from the laundry to the kitchen and the medical centre. I watched
inmates, with their hands and feet shackled, get their teeth cleaned by the
local dentist.
Yalda Hakim and the BBC team were granted
exclusive access to Bagram prison near Kabul
They got to see what daily life was like for
the detainees, many of whom have been in the prison for years
But many told our correspondent they were
innocent men who had never been told the evidence against them
Aside from this
perceived normality, I quickly realised the true darkness of the place.
Cell after cell
contained men proclaiming their innocence; telling me they were farmers who got
caught up in American raids on their villages.
I was taken into one
cell where a group of about 20 men had gathered to express their grievances.
One man told me he had
been held for four and a half years without trial.
He could not tell me
what evidence there was against him. He went on to say that after he was
captured, he was tortured by the Americans at a place known as the black
prison. I could not verify the authenticity of his story….
This former inmate
from Afghanistan's Khost Province says he was taken in for interrogation about
a car he had bought in Dubai.
Asked by the BBC whether
he had been funding the the militant Haqqani network, as the US claims, he said
he had no connection with any group and that the Americans had incorrect
information.
He said he had done
nothing against the Afghan government or national forces, describing himself
and his family as poor, hard-working people.
He said he had hoped the Americans would build
new roads when they came to Afghanistan, but instead he found himself arrested
by them.
During the two days I
was there, I came across families who were visiting their detained relatives.
Many had made the long
journey from the south of the country, travelling on buses for days to get
here.
They were allowed
about 30 minutes together, often separated by a bullet-proof window.
Each of the family
members had numbered placards round their necks. We never got to the bottom of
what those numbers indicated but it certainly felt surreal.
It is difficult to
know whether these men are innocent or not.
The Americans have
accused the Afghan authorities of ignoring forensic evidence.
The Afghans have
rebutted these claims, saying their US counterparts have not provided them with
sufficient intelligence.
The lack of trust
between the supposed allies is clear.
Afghan President Hamid
Karzai told me Bagram is a "Taliban-making factory" where innocent
people are indiscriminately mixing with extremists and being indoctrinated.
Now that some of these
prisoners have been released - some of them to the most troubled regions where
the Taliban hold sway - the question is, will American fears be realized ?
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