Kandahar Central Jail, also known as Sarpuza Prison or Sarposa Prison, is a minimum security prison in

Kandahar Kandahar (; Kandahār, , Qandahār) is a List of cities in Afghanistan, city in Afghanistan, located in the south of the country on the Arghandab River, at an elevation of . It is Afghanistan's second largest city after Kabul, with a population ...

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 ...

. It has been historically used for the incarceration of common criminals of

Kandahar Province Kandahār ( ps, ; Kandahār, prs, ; ''Qandahār'') is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the southern part of the country, sharing a border with Pakistan, to the south. It is surrounded by Helmand in the west, Uruzgan ...

. In the last two decades, the facility has also been used to hold up

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state (polity), state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalist, m ...

and other insurgents. The name "Sarpuza" is a historical neighborhood in the city of Kandahar. As of 2017, the prison has approximately 1,900 inmates, and its

warden A warden is a custodian, defender, or guardian. Warden is often used in the sense of a watchman or guardian, as in a prison warden. It can also refer to a chief or head official, as in the Warden of the Mint. ''Warden'' is etymologically identic ...

is Col. Abdul Wali Hesarak. The prison has been subject to two major escapes, first in a coordinated attack in May 2008, and more recently in a tunneling escape that occurred in April 2011. The

Afghan government The government of Afghanistan, officially called the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is the central government of Afghanistan, a unitary state. Under the leadership of the Taliban, the government is a theocracy and an emirate with political powe ...

is in the process of relocating Kandahar Central Jail to the

Daman, Afghanistan Daman is a village and the center of Daman District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. It is located at 1037 m altitude close to the main road from Kandahar to Kabul, east of Kandahar. Villages 1. Dayi, Daman District See also *Kandahar Provin ...

, which is located outside the city limits to the south. Over 1,000 prisoners were released from the prison by Taliban insurgents in August 2021, after they gained control of the city as part of the

Taliban offensive {{Infobox military conflict , partof = the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) and the Afghanistan conflict , image = 2021 Taliban Offensive.png , image_size = 300px , caption = Map of the 2021 Taliban o ...

History

The year in which the Kandahar Central Jail was built is unconfirmed. It was renovated in the 1970s to house common criminals of

. Some prisoners who had committed murders were hanged to death at the prison site in the 1960s. During the early seventies some western hippie type tourists caught with drugs were also held here pending trial. It was pretty casual in the jail for the westerners. Hashish smoking was allowed inside the prison. There was in fact a large hookah set up under a tree that the inmates smoked from. Inmates had to provide for their own food. During the 1980s, the facility was used by

KHAD prs, ریاست عمومی امنیت ملی , nativename_r = , seal = Emblem of the KHAD (1980-1987).svg , seal_width = 100px , seal_caption = KHAD emblem from 1980 to 1987. , formed = , preceding1 = Da Af ...

to detain and torture members of the

Mujahideen ''Mujahideen'', or ''Mujahidin'' ( ar, مُجَاهِدِين, mujāhidīn), is the plural form of ''mujahid'' ( ar, مجاهد, mujāhid, strugglers or strivers or justice, right conduct, Godly rule, etc. doers of jihād), an Arabic term th ...

movement in order to extract information about rebel activities. According to

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

intelligence analysts the Taliban used the prison as a "

political prison A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...

". The Taliban had confined

Ismail Khan Mohammad Ismail Khan (Dari/Pashto: محمد اسماعیل خان) (born 1946) is an Afghan former politician who served as Minister of Energy and Water from 2005 to 2013 and before that served as the governor of Herat Province. Originally a cap ...

at Sarpuza prison for a short time in 1999. Guantanamo detainee

Abd Al Rahim Abdul Raza Janko A Syrian- Kurd, Abd al-Rahim Abdul Rassak al-Janko (عبدالرحیم عبدالرزاق الجنکو) is a former student in the United Arab Emirates who traveled to Afghanistan in 2000, where he was captured by the Taliban who announced that he ...

described being held in the prison following his torture by the Taliban. The record shows that the prison continued to be used in the post-Taliban era for detention and interrogation. Guantanamo detainee Sultan Sari Sayel Al Anazi faced the allegation that when he was held in the prison, prior to being sent to Guantanamo: While imprisoned at Sarapuza jail in Kandahar the detainee collaborated with other prisoners to hide money in mattresses and bed frames in his prison cell. A number of the captives were later transported in May 2012 to

extrajudicial detention Administrative detention is arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. A number of jurisdictions claim that it is done for security reasons. Many countries claim to use administrative detention as a means to combat terrorism ...

in the

Guantanamo Bay detention camp The Guantanamo Bay detention camp ( es, Centro de detención de la bahía de Guantánamo) is a United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, also referred to as Guantánamo, GTMO, and Gitmo (), on the coast of Guant ...

s, in

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

, and finally to the

Parwan Detention Facility The Parwan Detention Facility (also called Detention Facility in Parwan or Bagram prison) is Afghanistan's main military prison. Situated next to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, the prison was built by the U.S. during t ...

next to

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 ...

north of

Kabul Kabul (; ps, , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. Located in the eastern half of the country, it is also a municipality, forming part of the Kabul Province; it is administratively divided into 22 municipal districts. Acco ...

Captives reported to have been in held in American custody in Kandahar

Prison attack of 2008

In May 2008, 200 prisoners went on hunger strike protesting detention without charge for up to two years.

Time magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Mar ...

,
Taliban Militants Storm Afghan Jail
, June 13, 2008 Many others faced summary trials they felt were unfair. Forty-seven inmates physically stitched their mouths shut. The strike ended when the Afghan parliament agreed to review their detentions. On June 13, 2008, the Taliban orchestrated the escape of 1,200 prisoners, including 350 Taliban by having two suicide bombers in a tanker truck blow up the main gates. Subsequently, 30 men arrived on motorcycles, killed 15 guards, and broke the locks on every cell. Following the prison breakout, the prison was rebuilt with major fortifications.

Tunneling escape of 2011

On April 24, 2011, a 350m tunnel that had been dug across a highway and under the prison walls, was used in the escape of about 475 Taliban inmates. The escape has been compared to the

Stalag Luft III , partof = ''Luftwaffe'' , location = Sagan, Lower Silesia, Nazi Germany (now Żagań, Poland) , image = , caption = Model of the set used to film the movie ''The Great Escape.'' It depicts a smaller version of a single compound in ''Stalag ...

tunnel escape in World War 2. The breakout was not detected for four hours, during which most of the prisoners were transported away. It was reported that at least 71 of the escapees were recaptured.

Release of prisoners in 2021

During the

Battle of Kandahar Battle of Kandahar may refer to: * Battle of Kandahar (1880), the last major conflict of the Second Anglo-Afghan War * Battle of Kandahar (2001), the fall of the city in 2001, signaling the end of organized Taliban control of Afghanistan * Battl ...

as part of the Taliban offensive, Taliban insurgents assaulted the city to gain control from the

Afghan National Security Forces The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), also known as the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), were the military and internal security forces of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Structure The Afghan National Security Forc ...

. After weeks of fighting, they overran the city on 12 August 2021, during which they released over 1,000 prisoners from the Sarposa prison.

References

{{AfghanPrisons Buildings and structures in Kandahar Prisons in Afghanistan Extrajudicial prisons of the United States