Hajimumin Hamza walks through an extended , dark corridor and punctiliously inspects the world as if he has never seen it before. Today, the 36-year old bearded man during a black turban and a standard two-piece garment may be a guide to fellow Taliban fighters within the place whose name he would rather forget. His eyes stop at a solitary chair standing on the pathway.
“They wont to tie us to the present chair, our hands and feet, then applied electric shocks. Sometimes they used it for beatings, too,” Hamza says, recounting the torture he underwent during his captivity in Bagram prison between 2017 and therefore the onset of the autumn of Kabul last month, when he managed to flee .
The us found out the Parwan Detention Facility, referred to as Bagram, or Afghanistan’s Guantanamo, in late 2001 to deal with armed fighters after the Taliban launched a rebellion following its removal from power during a military invasion.
The facility located within the Bagram airbase within the Parwan province was meant to be temporary. But it clothed otherwise. It housed quite 5,000 prisoners until its doors were forced open, days before the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan on Assumption .
Sultan, who was jailed at Bagram between 2014 and August 2021, says he lost his teeth during what came to be referred to as enhanced interrogation techniques that rights groups say amounted to torture and violated law of nations . The 42 year old, who doesn’t share his surname, opens his mouth to demonstrate the damage.
The Geneva Convention
The group of Taliban members passes an outsized plaque located at the prison’s wall with the words of the Geneva Convention in English and Dari but nobody cares to read it.
“The following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in anywhere whatsoever (…). Violence to life and person, especially murder of all types , mutilation, cruel treatment and torture,” it reads.
But all of them know that in Bagram, none of those rules applied. because the former prisoners say, if you entered Bagram, there was no answer . And if you weren’t an enemy fighter before landing there, you’d surely leave together .
None of the thousands of inmates who skilled the location over the 20 years of the American war, received the status of prisoner of war.
In 2002, after the death of two Afghan prisoners in detention, the centre came under scrutiny and 7 American soldiers faced charges. The abuses, however, continued and shortly became a part of the “Bagram handbook”.
Hamza remembers far more than the electrical shocks. Hanging the wrong way up for hours. Water and tear gas being poured on sleeping prisoners from the bars on a cell’s ceiling. Confinement in tiny, windowless, solitary cells for weeks or months with either no light or a bright bulb switched on 24/7.
‘Black jail’
According to the previous inmates, none of these who experienced solitary , the so-called “black jail”, whose existence the US has denied, left the cells psychologically healthy.
“There were tons of various sorts of torture, including sexual assault . They used devices to form us less of a person ,” Hamza says, without giving details. “It is psychologically hard on behalf of me to recall all that was happening. The torture was mostly done by Afghans, sometimes the Americans. But the orders came from the US.”
Hamza joined the Taliban at the age of 16 following the US invasion. In his eyes, the Americans were invaders occupying his land. He saw fighting against them as his duty as a Muslim and Afghan. He would tend training in bomb and IED-making after his classes at the Department of Agriculture at the Kabul University.
He was detained in summer 2017 and first transferred to Safariad prison in Kabul. He then was sent to 2 other detention facilities before ending up in Bagram four months later. As he says, he was tortured altogether the jails he skilled . within the end, he was sentenced to 25 years.
“Eighty-five per cent of individuals in Bagram were Taliban, the remainder were Daesh [ISIL, or ISIS] members. When the American and Afghan forces conducted their operations and couldn’t find any Talibs, they might capture innocent people. a number of them were kept here for years before they were released thanks to lack of evidence,” Hamza says.
The former prisoners, along side a gaggle of Talibs, rehearse the cells within the prison’s barracks and take photos of what remains. Clothing, personal items and tea cups lie scattered on the ground . consistent with the prisoners, the cells had up to 34 inmates. The walls bear writings in Pashto and Dari.
“People were writing memories, sort of a diary. We did that because we wanted to go away a sworn statement just in case the Americans kill us. in order that people know that we were here,” Hamza says.
“In the start , we only had orange clothes but we protested against the color then got white and black, more traditional garments. One piece of clothing per person. We had just one blanket each, albeit it had been cold within the winter months. Sometimes we had to share them with new prisoners. Some people waited months to urge theirs.”
I bought a phone from a guard for 1,000 Afghanis ($11.50), we found a hole within the wall and once we had a connection, we made phone calls,” Hamza says. “I had it for 2 years. it had been found a couple of times, but I always managed to urge another one.”
It was the phone that eventually helped the prisoners escape. because the US forces left the bottom on June 2 without informing the Afghan government and therefore the Taliban intensified its military offensive, Bagram was left with little supervision.
“One folks felt sick and that we were calling for help. But nobody came. There was only silence,” Hamza says. “This was once we decided to run away. We broke the bars with the metal plates our food was served on.”
After getting out of their cells, the inmates took the weapons left behind by the United States Army and captured the few Afghan guards who were still left. They eventually freed them, also as other inmates.
“More than 5,000 prisoners escaped but I’m unsure what percentage . The corridors were filled with people. I took my phone, found an area to charge it and made a call ,” says Hamza.
Shortly afterwards, his brother came to select him up. But the truth outside was unfamiliar.
“When we went out we couldn’t recognise anything, especially the youngsters . We spent tons of your time with adults only, we hadn’t seen our families. People, cars, everything seemed foreign,” Hamza says.
‘We aren’t just like the Americans’
It is the primary time that Hamza has returned to the prison after fleeing. a jail that he never thought he would go away . He walks through the grounds of the previous US airbase, where personal items of soldiers and prisoners, food and elements of armour, dwell a disordered mess and he says he’s happy that he’s now free.
e doesn’t specify what happened to the Daesh fighters who served time along side the Taliban.
About 65 kilometres south at Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul, Mullah Nooruddin Turabi sits on a chair during a prison office. The Taliban leader has been recently appointed because the head of Afghanistan’s prison system, an equivalent function he had under the previous Taliban government within the 1990s. He returned to Afghanistan after 20 years of exile in Pakistan, where many Taliban officials took refugee status following the US invasion
“Our deeds will show that we aren’t just like the Americans who say that they represent human rights but committed terrible crimes. there’ll be no more torture and no more hunger,” Turabi says, as he explains that the new prison staff will include members of the old system and therefore the Taliban mujahideen.
