I have not ever done anything to help Taliban because I barely can take care of my family.
I don’t know of any Taliban in my village.
There is no Taliban in my village … I do not know any Taliban at all. 20 Stories from BagramĪt a Detainee Review Board on June 5, 2010, it was explained that 2 out of 3 board members found that internment was necessary to mitigate the threat posed by Nek Marjan (also identified as Shah Wazir), who was assessed to be “a part of or a substantial supporter of insurgent forces opposing Coalition Forces,” even though, alarmingly, it was also noted, “Notwithstanding the majority vote, the evidence was so weak that one board member found no internment criteria.” Individually, the stories these documents are not always revealing - although in some cases they clearly are - but cumulatively they help to provide an overview of the entire process, and, unfortunately, echo the problems with the tribunals at Guantánamo on which they were modelled. The last 20 stories will be covered in an article to follow. These 58 documents contain more information than the brief summaries - the Commander’s Final Decision Memo, a Memo from the DRB President to the Commander or the Deputy Commander, a DRB Report of Findings and Recommendations, and, most importantly, a Summary of the DRB Hearing, which, between redactions, usually contains some of the allegations against the prisoners, which are otherwise unknown, and some of the prisoners’ own statements and their responses to questions from the panel.īelow, following the first part of this three-part series, are 20 more stories from these documents - of prisoners recommended for release, for transfer to the Afghan authorities for prosecution, or for release under a rehabilitation program, or for continued detention at Bagram/Parwan - these various choices being a refined version of the unilateral reworking of the Geneva Conventions under President Bush that has not been adequately addressed under President Obama (see my articles The Black Hole of Bagram, What is Obama Doing at Bagram? (Part One): Torture and the “Black Prison” and What is Obama Doing at Bagram? (Part Two): Executive Detention, Rendition, Review Boards, Released Prisoners and Trials.
The stories come from the Detainee Review Boards at Bagram, established by President Obama in 2009, and are taken from documents obtained by the ACLU through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, in which the Pentagon not only released documents providing summaries of the review boards’ conclusions (which I began analyzing here), but also released 58 documents relating to specific prisoners. This is the second of three articles telling, for the first time, stories - in the prisoners’ own words, albeit in a heavily redacted format - from the US prison at Bagram airbase (now replaced by a new building, called the Detention Facility at Parwan). This is the sixth article in “ Bagram Week” here at Andy Worthington (although I freely acknowedge that the original seven-day schedule has slipped), with seven articles in total exploring what is happening at the main US prison in Afghanistan through reports, analyses of review boards, and the voices of the prisoners themselves, and ongoing updates to the definitive annotated Bagram prisoner list.
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