U.S. building new jails across Afghanistan despite drawdown
The U.S. is supposed to hand over control of its massive new detention center outside Bagram Air Field to the Afghans this year, but new contracts reveal plans to build more jails in the war zone, Danger Room reports.
Afghanistan will take over the Parwan detention facility later this year, although negotiations have been difficult because of worries regarding the country’s corruption-prone judicial system. Hoping to create a new justice model, the U.S. military set up a judicial complex near the prison, but complaints from troops and Afghans persist throughout the country.
Despite the transfer at Parwan, high-risk detainees from Parwan will likely remain in U.S. custody and be transferred to new U.S.-run facilities, according to Danger Room.
The Army recently awarded a no-bid contract to an Afghan contractor to build a new U.S. government-controlled detention facility and plans to build another larger facility equipped with maximum-security holding cells, the military and technology blog noted.
Read more from Danger Room on U.S. plans to build more prisons in Afghanistan.
