[JURIST] Nine Afghan witnesses have claimed that they were held and tortured in a secret US prison at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, according to a BBC report Thursday. The witnesses say that they were allegedly captured by American forces and taken to a secret location where they were abused and interrogated, then later transported to an official detention facility in Parwan, a new prison recently opened at the edge of Bagram Air Base. Torture allegations include sleep deprivation, disorientation, beating, and humiliation tactics. The report comes a few weeks after US President Barack Obama made a surprise visit to the base in Afghanistan. The new US prison has room for 1,400 detainees, is part of the Obama administration’s wider efforts to improve its Afghan detainee system, and will eventually be controlled by the Afghan government later this year. Rights groups have previously called on the Obama administration to make sure its detention policy conforms to international law. Despite the alleged witness accounts of torture, the US government continues to deny the existence of secret prisons in Afghanistan.
Alleged prisoner abuse linked to the war on terror in Afghanistan has received international attention. Last week, a retired Canadian military officer who served in Afghanistan said that Canadian soldiers believed that prisoners may have been abused after being transferred to prison facilities in Afghanistan. Human rights groups have also criticized military procedures in the country. Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed habeas corpus petitions on behalf of four detainees held at Bagram Air Base, claiming that none of the men has engaged in hostile behavior directed at the US, nor are they members of groups that purport to do so. In January, the US Department of Defense released a list of names of 645 prisoners detained at Bagram in response to a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU last September. Prisoners at Bagram have launched previous habeas corpus challenges in US courts but thus far have been less successful than those held at Guantanamo Bay.