Several 'illegal foreign detention facilities' uncovered in Afghan govt probe

Several "unlawful" prisons run by coalition forces in Afghanistan have been uncovered at Camp Bastion and Kandahar airfield in an investigation commissioned by President Hamid Karzai. The find could put a further strain on Afghan-Western relations.

“We have conducted a thorough investigation and search of Kandahar airfield and Camp Bastion and found several illegal and unlawful detention facilities run and operated by foreign military forces,” the head of the committee, Abdul Shakur Dadras, told the government Saturday, The New York Times reported.

Two sites were surveyed by Dadras’s team in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar – Camp Bastion, operated by the British, and the Kandahar airfield, which the Americans run. In the course of the investigation the team surveyed number of prisoners and the conditions they were kept in.

Further details and evidence will be released after a full report is made to President Karzai. The issue at Camp Bastion, otherwise known as 'British Guantanamo', had not been addressed in the past when the British stood accused of transferring prisoners to facilities where they knew torture was taking place. But it was not made clear in Dadras’s report whether these are the same facilities as the ones he described.

http://rt.com/news/155140-afghanistan-foreign-detention-facilities/


Afghan Panel Claims to Find Secret Prisons

KABUL, Afghanistan — A commission appointed by President Hamid Karzai to investigate detention facilities run by American and British forces in southern Afghanistan claimed Saturday to have uncovered secret prisons on two coalition bases, an allegation that could not be immediately confirmed but that was likely to further complicate relations between the Afghan government and its allies.

“We have conducted a thorough investigation and search of Kandahar Airfield and Camp Bastion and found several illegal and unlawful detention facilities run and operated by foreign military forces,” said Abdul Shakur Dadras, the panel’s chairman.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/world/asia/afghan-panel-claims-to-find-secret-prisons.html?_r=0