US Releases, Disappears 'Terrorist' From Bagram Hell-Hole

Last night, Reprieve was advised that the United States released Yunus Rahmatullah from the torture prison at Bagram Airbase, after ten years of detention, including torture there, without charge or trial. 

“This is an amazing day for Yunus and his family, but the fight for his freedom is not over yet,” says Clive Stafford-Smith, head of the charity organization Reprieve UK.

To appreciate the significance of this announcement and what Yunus has experienced thus far, watch Brave New Foundations’ video below, Bagram Prison Worst than Gauntanamo.

In yet another catastrophic case of “mistaken identity,” British forces seized Yunus in Iraq in 2004, handed him over to the Americans, who eventually rendered him to Afghanistan.

“He was never charged, never tried, and throughout his horrendous ten-year ordeal, he was never once allowed to meet with his lawyer,”  Stafford-Smith says.

Upon capturing Yunus, UK troops blindfolded him, punched, kicked him, and hit him with the butt of their rifles. He was thrown in the back of a military vehicle and driven to a camp. On the way, the vehicle stopped and Yunus was taken out. UK forces again violently assaulted him.

Soon after, the UK military transferred Yunus to its US counterpart. He was detained in Iraq at the now-notorious Camp Nama, where UK forces were also present, and possibly also in Abu Ghraib prison.

While in Iraq he was held in isolation, often blindfolded, and subjected to a shopping-list of torture methods including: exposure to extreme temperature, whipping, having his head submerged in water, being forced to remain naked for several weeks, severe beatings and being hung from the ceiling by his wrists. 

That was before he even made it to Bagram, ‘Guantánamo Bay of Afghanistan’. (Read more here.)

Now, under US orders, Yunus has been disappeared, taken from Bagram to a secret location in Pakistan, where he is being held prisoner.  It appears as thought the Obama administration is again attempting to avoid legal and media scrutiny the Yunus’s case actually deserves.

“But we’re already fighting for Yunus in the Pakistani courts and today, a Lahore judge ordered the government to reveal his whereabouts,” Stafford-Smith said in his email Friday.

For ten years, the British government denied that they were involved in his rendition. Finally, then-Secretary of State for Defence John Hutton admitted to Parliament in 2009 that British forces were involved in Yunus’s abduction and rendition.

“Yet despite this admission, the government still refused to help him,” Stafford-Smith said Friday. “As a result, we took legal action on Yunus’s behalf.”`

The UK subsequently revealed that British officials knew about the US’s intention to transfer Yunus from Iraq to Afghanistan at the time, yet did nothing to stop it. 

In 2012, the UK Supreme Court suggested Yunus’s rendition might have amounted to a war crime.

“We hope that tomorrow the families of seven Pakistanis languishing in Bagram may finally get some answers from Lahore’s High Court,” Reprieve’s Legal Director Cori Crider had said. “After years of grief these mothers deserve to know how and why their sons – including an innocent 14-year-old kid – have not been brought home by the government of Pakistan.

“After years of unimaginable abuse at the hands of British and US forces, Yunus deserves a full investigation into his ordeal. We are taking legal action to force the UK government to fully investigate his rendition and torture.”

Yunus lived a decade-long nightmare in the black hole, Bagram. 

“We are determined to make sure he gets justice, so that he and his family can move on and return to some semblance of their former, peaceful lives,” Stafford-Smith said.

For insight into how the US illegal kidnap and torture campaign against Muslims is impacting people and making all Americans less safe, watch the music video below produced by SuperShah50′s YouTube channel.

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