Bagram Theater Internment Facility

The Parwan Detention Facility (PDF), also called the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, is an Afghanistan-run prison located next to Bagram Airfield in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan.

It was formerly known by the United States as the Bagram Collection Point. While initially intended as a temporary facility, it has been used longer and handled more detainees than the US Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. As of early June 2011 the Obama administration held 1700 prisoners at the military base; there had been 600 prisoners under the Bush administration. None of the prisoners has received POW status.

The treatment of inmates at the facility has been under scrutiny since two Afghan detainees died in the 2002 Bagram torture and prisoner abuse case. Their deaths were classified as homicides and prisoner abuse charges were made against seven American soldiers. Concerns about lengthy detentions here have prompted comparisons to U.S. detention centers in Guantanamo Bay on Cuba and Abu Graib in Iraq. Part of the internment facility is called the Black jail.

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Red Army built Bagram Airfield. The airfield included large hangars that fell into disrepair after the Soviets left.

When the US military and their allies ousted the Taliban, US forces took possession of the former Soviet base. The US military did not need the volume of hangar space, so it built a detention facility inside the large unused hangars. Like the first facilities later built at Guantanamo's Camp X-Ray, the cells were built of wire mesh. Only captives held in solitary confinement have individual cells. The other captives share larger open cells with other captives.

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