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U.S.-Backed Prison Criticized
Thursday, February 21, 2002
By Liam Pleven
Special to the Tribune

Liam Pleven is a staff writer for Newsday, a Tribune newspaper



Like the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the approximately 3,200 captives in Shibergan, about 2,000 of them Afghans and the remainder Pakistanis, are in a legal limbo. They have not been formally charged with any crime, and it could be months before their fate is determined.

SHIBERGAN, Afghanistan
As governments and human-rights groups debate the conditions for America's prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, more than 3,000 men are crammed into frigid cells at a remote jail here, far from any publicity.

The men, Afghans and Pakistanis, wrap themselves in thin blankets and huddle against the cold or mill about the unheated concrete cellblocks, where barred windows are open to the freezing winds of the northern Afghan plain.

Many are sick or have festering, unhealed wounds.

The "deplorable conditions" here have caused "epidemic illness and deaths," the Boston-based group Physicians for Human Rights declared last month, after inspecting Shibergan. Because U.S. forces helped set up the prison, the United States is partly responsible for the conditions at the prison, it said.

The prison warden, Gen. Jurabek, has conceded that conditions are poor. This week, he said 10 to 15 detainees had died, although he did not say when.
(More: The Chicago Tribune News Source)
2002 © The Chicago Tribune.

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