Parliamentary question - E-0232/2008Parliamentary question
E-0232/2008

Prison at the military base in Bagram (Afghanistan)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0232/08
by Elena Valenciano Martínez-Orozco (PSE)
to the Commission

The American Detention Centre, a prison at the military base in Bagram (Afghanistan) built during the 2001 invasion as a provisional detention centre, now holds some 630 prisoners, more than double the 275 held at Guantánamo, in conditions very similar to those at the US military base in Cuba whose existence has been the object of much controversy.

The treatment of many of the prisoners at the Bagram base has given rise to vocal complaints to the Pentagon by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside body allowed to enter the detention centre.

The Red Cross has repeatedly made formal complaints to the Pentagon over the ‘inhuman’ treatment of the Bagram prisoners. The international body says the US army is keeping dozens of prisoners incommunicado for weeks on end. Access to the prison is being denied to the Red Cross inspectors, who suspect that the prisoners are being subjected to abusive treatment in breach of the Geneva Convention.

Is the Commission aware of the existence of this detention centre? What is its view on the matter? Will it respond to the complaints of the Red Cross? What measures will it adopt in the face of this latest violation of human rights by the US, with the ‘war on terror’ as a pretext? Will the Commission yet again stand on the sidelines in the face of this recourse to the indefinite arrest of ‘enemy combatants’, without legal guarantees of any kind?

OJ C 291, 13/11/2008