RASC News Agency: The Taliban regime has reactivated Bagram Prison, a facility once notorious as the epicenter of U.S.-led counterterrorism efforts. This move stems from the alarming overcrowding in other prisons across the country, which are now teeming with innocent detainees to the point where they can no longer accommodate new prisoners. Reports indicate that more than one hundred thousand Afghanistanis, predominantly from the Tajik ethnic group, are currently confined within the Taliban’s brutal prison system. Credible sources reveal that up until a year ago, the Taliban had imprisoned fourteen thousand Tajiks from Panjshir in various prisons across Kabul, Logar, Nangarhar, Paktia, and Paktika. Similarly, thousands of individuals from Andarab and other northern provinces have been arrested and incarcerated on charges of collaborating with thTalibane National Resistance Front, the Freedom Front, and other anti- factions.
In response to this overwhelming influx of detainees, the Taliban have now reactivated Bagram Prison a facility once used by U.S. forces to detain Taliban members captured on the battlefield or involved in suicide attacks. Ironically, years later, the regimes of Karzai and Ghani released these very prisoners from Bagram, often with monetary incentives, enabling them to rejoin the fight against Afghanistan security forces. Now, the Taliban have reopened this infamous prison, transferring a number of prisoners there.
Bagram Prison is part of the Bagram Air Base, which, during the two-decade rule of the corrupt and criminal regimes of Karzai and Ghani, was under the control of U.S.-led international coalition forces. It served as a central operational hub in the fight against the Taliban and ISIS. During the Afghanistan war, the prison became infamous as “Afghanistan’s Guantanamo,” where high-risk Taliban detainees captured by coalition and Afghanistan security forces were held.
In their three years of governance, the Taliban have arrested hundreds of individuals on various charges, including collaboration with anti-Taliban fronts, ethnic and religious affiliations, as well as journalists, women, and university professors. Today, the Taliban regime has imprisoned so many Afghanistanis that existing facilities have reached capacity, leading them to reactivate Bagram Prison. This facility is now being used to detain even more people under ambiguous charges and accusations of political, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious offenses.
Before the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan in 2021, Bagram Airfield was the largest U.S. military base in the country. Former U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly criticized the abandonment of this base, claiming that it has since been “occupied” by China following America’s exit from Afghanistan.
