US Releases Bagram Prisoner Names

Detroit's Martin Luther King Day March 2007 featured anti-war and anti-racist signs. The escalation of the war in Afghanistan and the Middle-East will be a focus of the 2010 MLK Day rally and march to be held on January 18.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Saturday, January 16, 2010
17:23 Mecca time, 14:23 GMT

US releases Bagram prisoner names

ACLU has welcomed the move, but demanded greater transparency about Bagram

The United States has published the names of 645 prisoners held at a controversial US-run prison in Afghanistan following a freedom of information lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Despite previous refusals to identify those held in the jail at Bagram, the ACLU received the list of names on Saturday after their request for documents related to the detention and treatment of prisoners at the base was partially accepted.

Melissa Goodman, a lawyer for ACLU, said the publication of the list was "an important step toward transparency and accountability at the secretive Bagram prison" but that vital information was still missing.

"Full transparency and accountability about Bagram requires disclosing how long these people have been imprisoned, where they are from and whether they were captured far from any battlefield or in other countries far from Afghanistan," she said.

A separate letter released by the US defence department on Friday said a "very small number" of prisoners were under 16 years of age, the Associated Press news agency reported.

'Unprecedented'

Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at City University of New York, told AP that the decision to release the names was significant. "This is completely unprecedented, we've never had access to the list," he said.

Kassem represents Amin al-Bakri, a Yemeni national, who was captured in Thailand and then sent to Bagram. In his case, a federal judge in Washington ruled that only those Bagram prisoners captured outside Afghanistan could file suit in the US.

US President Barack Obama's administration is appealing against the decision.

Bagram, north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, has been used as a detention facility by the US-led coalition in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban government in December 2001.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies