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Longtime Gitmo Watchdog Turns His Sights On Abandoned Prisoners at Bagram Prison
Courtesy Andy Worthington
From Worthington's site:
Although I believe that I have had some success tracking down the stories of some of the 100 or so prisoners on the list who have been held at Bagram for between three and seven years, I have found few clues as to the identities of the majority of those listed, who, as mentioned above, were seized in the last two years. Most reports -- by the US military or the media -- of raids or skirmishes that led to the capture of those held have not furnished the names of those seized, and on the rare occasion that names have been provided it has tended to be because they are regarded as significant figures.
I have no idea whether the allegations against these men are true, but, more importantly, I have not failed to notice that the majority of the prisoners (often men identified by only one name) are clearly not significant figures at all, and my fear -- which, I have no doubt, will be confirmed when more information emerges -- is that many of them will be revealed to be victims of the same chaotic approach to the capture of prisoners that has done so much to lose the battle for the "hearts and minds" of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq for the last eight years, and which, with regard to the 218 prisoners seized in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2003 and sent to Guantánamo, I chronicled in The Guantánamo Files.
One sign that this is indeed the case was reported on NPR last August, when NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman explained how Maj. Gen. Doug Stone had recently been sent to Afghanistan by Gen. David Petraeus, the overall commander of Afghanistan and Iraq, because he "liked the way Stone revamped the detention centers in Iraq, how he changed them for the better." Bowman explained that Stone "went to Afghanistan with a team, interviewed detainees, visited detention facilities," and produced a 700-page report, in which he estimated that "as many as 400 of the 600 held at Bagram can be released," explaining that "many of these men were swept up in raids" and "have little connection to the insurgency."
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The annotated list follows.
