Former detainees at Bagram air base in Afghanistan have alleged a catalogue of abuses at the US military facility, the BBC has reported, after a two-month investigation.
Ex-inmates listed mistreatment including beatings, sleep deprivation and being threatened with dogs at the base north of Kabul.
‘They did things that you would not do against animals, let alone to humans,’ said one former detainee, identified as Dr Khandan, while another described having a gun put to his head and being threatened with death.
The detainees were held in Bagram between 2002 and 2008.
They were all accused of belonging to or helping al-Qaeda, but no charges were brought and some received apologies when released.
The Pentagon denies the allegations, made in interviews with 27 former detainees, the BBC said, adding that only two of those questioned reported having been treated well.
It quoted a spokesman for US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Mark Wright, as saying conditions at Bagram ‘meet international standards for care and custody’.
‘There have been well-documented instances where that policy was not followed and service members have been held accountable for their actions in those cases,’ he added in a statement.
But a British legal rights lobby group, Reprieve, says the allegations confirm its concerns.
‘Bagram is the new Guantanamo Bay,’ it says in a statement.
The BBC noted that US President Barack Obama vowed to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba immediately after taking office in January.
Unlike Guantanamo detainees, inmates in Bagram have no access to lawyers and they cannot challenge their detention, it said.
