The New York Times picks up the latest story on the "black jail" in Afghanistan from the Washington Post report about two Afghan kids who were abused at the prison by Special Ops. It seems the black site -- a holdover from the Bush administration -- is doing a lot of business.
The jail’s operation highlights a tension between President Obama’s goal to improve detention conditions that had drawn condemnation under the Bush administration and his stated desire to give military commanders leeway to operate. While Mr. Obama signed an order to eliminate so-called black sites run by the Central Intelligence Agency in January, it did not also close this jail, which is run by military Special Operations forces.
Military officials said as recently as this summer that the Afghanistan jail and another like it at the Balad Air Base in Iraq were being used to interrogate high-value detainees. And officials said recently that there were no plans to close the jails.
In August, the administration restricted the time that detainees could be held at the military jails to two weeks, changing previous Pentagon policy. In the past, the military could obtain extensions.
"Black"? No monitoring is allowed at the site. The Red Cross is kept out. We only know what happens there thanks to accounts, often deeply disturbing, from some who have been seized and imprisoned there. Worst of all -- given that we are allegedly working on ending warfare and corruption in Afghanistan -- we are operating the prison outside of the laws of Afghanistan.
Human rights researchers say they worry that the jail remains in the shadows and largely inaccessible both to the Red Cross and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, which has responsibility for ensuring humane treatment of detainees under the Afghan Constitution.
