Gitmo-UK? 80 to 90 Afghans held at British base without charges
British troops in Afghanistan are holding 80 to 90 people, some for as long as 14 months, without charging them. Lawyers call it a ‘secret prison’ akin to Guantanamo Bay, but the government says the facility is operated legally.
The prisoners, Afghan nationals suspected of crimes or having
links to insurgents, are kept in detention at Camp Bastion, the
largest UK base in Afghanistan, housing some 30,000 troops.
Normally British troops are supposed to hold prisoners in custody
for no longer than 96 hours, but under exceptional circumstances
longer detention is possible.
Apparently there are almost a hundred such exceptional cases
currently. Lawyers acting for eight of the men say some of the
prisoners have been held without charge for up to 14 months,
arguing that it could be amount to unlawful detention. They also
say that the situation has been kept a secret from the public.
“The UK could have trained the Afghan authorities to detain
people lawfully with proper standards and making sure that they
are treated humanely,” Phil Shiner, of Public Interest
Lawyers, told the BBC.
“Parliament has not been told that we have this secret
facility,” he added.
British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond confirmed the detention
of the prisoners and their number, but not the time of their
detention. He said Ministry of Defence did nothing wrong in the
situation and denied the allegation that the government failed to
report about the prisoners, saying both the current cabinet and
the previous one informed the parliament.
Earlier the MoD defended the imprisonment at the base.
“The UK’s temporary holding facilities at Camp Bastion are
regularly monitored by the ICRC,” the MoD said in a
statement, referring to the International Committee of the Red
Cross, adding that the detentions “are legal under the UN
mandate and comply with all applicable international
obligations.”
The secretary explained that the prisoners in question pose a
threat to British troops if released, and that “protecting
troops, whether it is from being murdered on the streets of
London or the fields of Helmand province.”
But the MoD cannot hand them over to Afghan authorities because
of the actions of their lawyers, Hammond said.
“What Mr. Shiner didn’t tell you is that last year his firm
started proceedings against the department precisely to prevent
us handing them over to the Afghan judicial authorities because
of concerns of treatment of prisoners in the Afghan system,”
he told BBC Radio 4.
In November last year Hammond issued a temporary ban on transfer
of prisoners to Afghan detention after a farmer claimed that he
had been tortured in a prison after being captured by UK troops
and handed over to Afghani judicial.
Official Kabul is sensitive
about detention of Afghans by the US-led military coalition and
wants to see all of the prisoners under Afghanistan’s control.
The handing over of the Bagram Prison from the US to Afghanistan,
which had been delayed several times, was a major irritant in
relations between President Hamid Karzai’s government and the
Obama administration.
The lawyers have launched habeas corpus applications at the High
Court in London, with a full hearing due in on July 23.
This article originally appeared on: RT
Source: http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/gitmo-uk-80-to-90-afghans-held-at-british-base-without-charges/37068/
