The black jail is a U.S. military

detention camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

established in 2002 inside

Bagram Air Base Bagram Airfield-BAF, also known as Bagram Air Base , is located southeast of Charikar in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan. It is under the Afghan Ministry of Defense. Sitting on the site of the ancient Bagram at an elevation of above sea leve ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

. Distinct from the main prison of the Bagram Internment Facility, the "Black Jail" is run by the U.S.

Defense Intelligence Agency The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is an intelligence agency and combat support agency of the United States Department of Defense, specializing in defense and military intelligence. A component of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the I ...

and U.S.

Special Operations Forces Special forces and special operations forces (SOF) are military units trained to conduct special operations. NATO has defined special operations as "military activities conducted by specially designated, organized, selected, trained and equip ...

. There are numerous allegations of abuse associated with the prison, including beatings, sleep deprivation and forcing inmates into

stress position A stress position, also known as a submission position, places the human body in such a way that a great amount of weight is placed on just one or two muscles. For example, a subject may be forced to stand on the balls of their feet, then squat ...

s. U.S. authorities refuse to acknowledge the prison's existence. The facility consists of individual windowless concrete

cell Cell most often refers to: * Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life Cell may also refer to: Locations * Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery ...

s, each illuminated by a single light bulb glowing 24 hours a day. Its existence was first reported by journalist

Anand Gopal Anand Gopal is a writer for The New Yorker magazine and author of ''No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban and the War Through Afghan Eyes'', which describes the travails of three Afghans caught in the war on terror. It was a finalist f ...

and confirmed by many subsequent investigations. Although

U.S. President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

signed an order to eliminate

black site In military terminology, a black site is a location at which an unacknowledged black operation or black project is conducted. According to the Associated Press, "Black sites are clandestine jails where prisoners generally are not charged with ...

s run by the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

in January 2009, that order did not apply to the black jail. However, in August, the Obama administration restricted the time that detainees could be held at the secret jail, and another like it at

Balad Air Base Balad Air Base ( ar, قاعدة بلد الجوية) , is an Iraqi Air Force base located near Balad, Iraq, Balad in the Sunni Triangle north of Baghdad, Iraq. Built in the early 1980s, it was originally named Al-Bakr Air Base. In 2003 the base ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

, to two weeks.

Human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

organisations are concerned that the jail remains inaccessible both to the

Red Cross The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...

and the

Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) (Dari:کمیسیون مستقل حقوق بشر افغانستان, ps, د افغانستان د بشري حقونو خپلواک کميسيون) is a national human rights institution that was ...

. The

ICRC The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signator ...

has claimed that it had been receiving names of inmates since 2009.

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...

reported on May 11, 2010, that the Red Cross had confirmed its existence to them and that they had heard the accounts of former inmates.

References

External links

DIA and the Black Jail at Bagram

Fresh claims US is running secret prison in Afghanistan
BBC News, October 15, 2010 {{DEFAULTSORT:Black Jail Extrajudicial prisons of the United States Operations involving American special forces Black sites Detention centers for extrajudicial prisoners of the United States 2002 establishments in Afghanistan

See also

References

External links