Parwan Detention Facility - US Handover of Bagram Prison To Afghan Government

US Handover of Bagram Prison To Afghan Government

The U.S. began detention operations at Bagram Air Field in early 2002. For several years, prisoners were kept at a former Soviet aircraft machine plant converted into a lockup. In 2009, the U.S. opened a new detention facility next door named Parwan Detention Facility. An Memorandum of Understanding to transfer control of the Parwan Detention Facility from the United States to Afghanistan was signed on March 9, 2012. According to Al Jazeera the agreement "will put an Afghan general in charge of Parwan within days, but will also give a six-month window to gradually transfer detainees to Afghan oversight. According to the document, the US will continue to provide logistical support for 12 months and a joint US-Afghan commission will decide on any detainee releases until a more permanent pact is adopted." The memorandum of understanding shifts also the responsibiliy for all U.S. detention facilities in the country to Afghanistan. Under the agreement, Afghan authorities will need to advise the United States of plans to release any prisoners and "consider favourably" objections if the Americans consider such inmates could engage in "terrorist activity". A further clause provides for a committee, made up of the Afghan defense minister and the commander of the American military in Afghanistan, to decide jointly on releases. US officials would also remain at the prison to provide advisory, technical and logistical support for a year until March 2012.

With the agreement signed on between on March 9 Afghanistan and the United States began a six-month transition from American to Afghan control of the Parwan Detention Facility north of Kabul and just outside Bagram, the largest US military base in the country. The US military handed control of the prison housing more than 3,000 Taliban fighters and terrorism suspects to the Afghan authorities in small ceremony on September 10, 2012, at which 16 prisoners, all wearing matching gray sweaters, were released. Army Col. Robert M. Taradash, who has overseen the prison, represented coalition forces. "We transferred more than 3,000 Afghan detainees into your custody... and ensured that those who would threaten the partnership of Afghanistan and coalition forces will not return to the battlefield," said Col Robert Taradash, the only US official at the ceremony. "Our Afghan security forces are well trained and we are happy that today they are exercising their capability in taking the responsibility of prisoners independently and guarding the prisoners," said acting Defence Minister Enayatullah Nazari. "We are taking the responsibility from foreign forces." "Now, the Bagram prison is converted to one of Afghanistan's regular prisons where the innocents will be freed and the rest of the prisoners will be sentenced according to the laws of Afghanistan," a statement by Afghan President Hamid Karzai said, who didn't attend the ceremony. No one from the American Embassy or the State Department was present. Also top American commanders were absent on the ceremony. American officials say the transfer agreement calls for the Afghan government to continue to hold some detainees even if there is not a formal legal case against them, reviewing their cases administratively rather than judicially. The Americans say it is impossible to build legal cases against all prisoners arrested in battlefield conditions. Afghan news media reported that a dispute over this practice led to a falling-out between Karzai and General John R. Allen, the American military commander in Afghanistan, over the weekend and apparently prompted the downgraded American presence at the ceremony.

The transition of prisons from American to Afghanistan control means prisoners leave their cells in one of the remaining American-controlled buildings and are taken to new cells in a building controlled by Afghans, but where American personnel will still be present in an advisory role until at least March 2013 under the March 9, 2012 agreement. An Afghan committee sorts the detainees into two groups: One group awaits criminal prosecution, and the other will be referred to a review board, which evaluates them and recommends whether to keep holding them without trial as wartime detainees. As of September 5, 2012 638 detaines have been approved for criminal prosecution, and 963 have been referred to the review board. The United States military will maintain control over dozens of foreign detainees in Bagram for the indefinite future. “If we keep these people with us in this current situation and deal with them, this will create more problems for us,” General Ghulam Farouk, the Afghan official who runs the Afghan-controlled portions of Parwan, said. “Therefore it is better for the Americans to keep them.” Further, although thousands of Afghan detainees have already been turned over, the United States will continue to hold and screen newly captured Afghans for a time, ensuring continued American involvement in detention and interrogation activities.

Since the Memorandum's signing the U.S. has transferred 3,082 detainees to Afghan control according to Afghan Army General Ghulam Farouk. He said on September 10, 2012 that the U.S. was in the process of transferring the remaining 30 inmates picked up before the memorandum was signed plus another 600 captured after the signing. But a few weeks ago, the U.S. stopped all transfers. A coalition official told CNN the United States is holding on to several Afghan detainees because of concerns about whether Afghan authorities will properly handle their cases and under what circumstances they might be released. The U.S. also is keeping several prisoners of other nationalities who were not part of the agreement the source said. "Some 99 percent of the detainees captured before 9 March have already been transferred to Afghan authority, but we have paused the transfer of the remaining detainees until our concerns are met," said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition. Graybeal would not describe the concerns, but a report released in early September 2012 by the New York-based Open Society Foundations said the rift was over whether the Afghans will have a so-called "internment" system that allows some detainees to be held without charge or trial. The U.S. has been holding detainees in internment at Bagram for years. Although the Afghan government agreed to embrace an internment system by signing the accord in March, some top Afghan officials and legal experts contend it violates the Afghan constitution, the report said. Moreover, Karzai himself is opposed to administrative detention (Detaines are held without access to lawyers, public trials or other legal rights), according to the report. The U.S. is now worried that the Afghan government will discontinue internment and either release dangerous detainees or forward their cases to the loosely run Afghan judicial system, which is tainted by corruption and secrecy, the group said. "There are concerns on the U.S. side about division in the Afghan government over internment and that it is not constitutional," said Rachel Reid, a senior policy adviser on Afghanistan for the Open Society Foundations. "The basic concern is that if they don't have internment, they will be released." On the flip side of the legal issue, some Afghan legal experts are worried about Afghan officials abusing any authority to hold detainees without trial. "Consider the fact that even our regular laws are ignored by powerful people," said Abdul Qawi Afzali of the Legal Aid Organization Afghanistan. "What will happen when you give them the actual, legal power to detain people like this law does?"

The US military still wants to run a section of the jail and is not handing over hundreds of detainees, saying it has the right to hold insurgents caught on the battlefield said the BBC's Jonathan Beale in Kabul. They include individuals from Pakistan, Tunisia, Yemen and detainees transferred to Bagram from other wars, such as Iraq. The U.S. will retain custody of these non-Afghan prisoners until their fate is addressed in another agreement between the Afghan and U.S. governments. Jason Ditz from ANTIWAR.COM noted that the retention of a portion of the Parwan Detention facility will allow the US to keep detainees there more or less forever, but will create a PR problem for the Afghan government.

The United States are not handing over hundreds of detainees saying it has the right to hold insurgents caught on the battlefield, but privately the US is concerned that some high-value inmates could be released if they are handed over according to the BBC's Jonathan Beale. These include about 50 foreigners not covered by the handover agreement signed in March 2012. Media commentators in Afghanistan questioned whether the Kabul government will be able to maintain security at Bagram prison after that the United States has handed over control. An editorial in independent Hasht-e Sobh newspaper noted: "The government has not had a good track record in maintaining inmates and prisons in recent years... The government has repeatedly called the Taliban their brothers and Taliban fighters detained on suicide-attack charges have been repeatedly released without trial."

Afghanistan's president Karzai has accused on 18 November 2012 US forces of continuing to capture and detain Afghans in violation of the handover agreement signed earlier in 2012. Karzai decried the continued arrest of Afghans by US forces and said some detainees were still being held by US troops even though Afghan judges have ruled that they should be released. During a meeting with Afghan President Karzai on January 11, 2013 U.S. President Obama and his counterpart agreed that the United States would hand over full control of Afghan prisoners and prisons to Afghanistan,

On March 9, 2013, the ceremony where the American military was to hand over full control of the prison to Afghanistan was canceled. There was no official reason given.

On March 25, 2013, the formal hand-over of the facility was made public. In a statement it was said that the hand-over followed after a week of negotiations between US and Afghan officials "which includes assurances that inmates who "pose a danger" to Afghans and international forces will continue to be detained under Afghan law"