Inside Bagram Prison Our World

headlines. Now it is Our World. Hundred cars a will release hundreds

of detainees, in a controversial move.

Bagram Prison, outside carpel. Some have called it Afghanistan 's

one-time obey. Last month 65 prisoners were released from here.

They have been held without trial, some for many years. The Americans

think they are Taliban insurgents and killers. We will release people

who are clearly hard-core terrorists. But the Afghan

authorities say that their men and that the prison has been handed over

to them. People who have come out of the prison have told me that this is

a prison where they take innocent Afghans and turn them against their

own country. The week before their release I was given unprecedented

access inside Bagram Prison and met some of the detainees. Today we

investigate how the releases are threatening to derail relations

between Afghanistan and the United States in a key moment in the

history of this nation. I am on my way to Bagram Prison on

the outskirts of couple. -- Kabul. The facility is located just outside

the massive US military airbase at Bagram. Last year the wings

containing Afghan born prisoners were given over to Afghanistan but

the US still overseas cell blocks containing foreign combatants. My

guide was General Farooq Barakzai, the Afghan army commander in overall

charge of this place. When I was shown around this prison

still had 1340 inmates. The guards are all from the Afghan national

army. This place was only built four years ago and the overall conditions

were much better than anything I have seen elsewhere in the prison

system of Afghanistan. I get the guided tour. The first stop is the

visiting area. Next on the two were the kitchens.

-- tour. The general was part of the facility but this felt like a public

relations exercise. But get to meet the inmates and see how they really

lived? The prisoners were allowed one hour of outside exercise per

day. There was even a garden for the inmates. There are strict rules

here. Breaking them is not advisable. Especially not rule

number seven. Background is also an intrusive facility. CCTV is

everywhere. The roofs of cells are grids and the guards can look down

at all times. All external communications are monitored, very

obviously so. At the medical wing and allowed my first contact with

the inmates. -- I was allowed. There was also a dental service. All

of those waiting for treatment in this holding pen were shackled hand

and foot. It was here that the prisoners showed their anger. This

man said that he was a journalist and poetry Kandahar and was arrested

in a night-time raid by US forces. He had been held here for almost six

months. TRANSLATION: If they have evidence they should show it to me

and take me to court and imprisoned if a life if that's what they want.

But how can they just stick media for no reason? -- stick me here.

Detention without trial was repeated complaint. It is something that the

authorities in couple are acting on. In this room we met some of the 65

men about to be released by the Afghan authorities, despite strong

objections from the US. The US military said that this man was a

Taliban co-ordinator who conducted bomb attacks. They said he was

caught with a firearm and propaganda on his phone as well is testing

positive for four types of explosives. He told us that he was

16 and a simple shepherd from hell manned province. We have no way of

knowing if he was telling the truth. But after a year in Bagram

Prison he certainly hated the Americans. TRANSLATION: I hate them

because I am here for no reason. Of course I hate them. I want to ask

them dashboard was my crime? If they gave me the evidence I would not

mind if they kept me in prison for ten years but nobody is asking about

that. I have spent a year far from my mother and father. Why? What is

the reason? Another inmate was described by the Americans as a

Taliban commander and financier of an Al Qaeda linked insurgent group

funded by donors in the Gulf states. But this man simply told me that he

bought himself a second-hand car in Dubai and was the victim of mistaken

identity. The US forces claimed that a arrested you because you were

funding a terrorist network. TRANSLATION: I have not helped

anybody with money. I have used this car for a while and some people who

have personal problems with me get the US military false information.

Despite their pleas of innocence, the US military is adamant that

these are all dangerous man. Just three weeks after we filmed them,

they were released from Bagram Prison amidst bitter political

creations. -- recriminations. This is all part of a high-level power

struggle between Washington and carpel about the future of

Afghanistan. After 13 years on the ground, US forces are leaving.

Delicate negotiations are going on about handover of power to the

Afghans. President Kaiser will leave office soon and he seems determined

to show his nationalist credentials by standing up to his American

allies. Getting prisoners out of Bagram Prison is all part of it. Mr

President, in a recent press conference he described Bagram

Prison as a Caliban making factory. What did you mean? Exactly that.

Those words are the words that people who have been released from

that prison have set themselves. They take innocent Afghans and turn

them against their own country and government. There is no denying that

there are elements of Al Qaeda and Taliban in prison. There are also

criminals, but those people who are criminals, real criminals, are a

minority. You have been accused of politicising this issue to enhance

your relationship and reputation with a Caliban. It is a political

issue. It is not related to the Caliban or the government. It is a

Afghan people issue. Afghan officials would not comment on

camera, but in Washington are met to officials who have been involved in

US Afghan relations in recent years. Is this decision-making

angry? It makes me angry and sad. Angry that we are going to release

people back out into the flight who clearly are hard-core terrorists.

Many of them were caught red-handed. The tests on their fingers showed

explosives. It is not as if this was questionable. These are the hard

core, literally over 1000 that we have released. He is corrupting the

Afghan rule of law, he is putting its population and our soldiers at

risk and there will be a price to be paid. There is a legal process to

decide which prisoners should stay in jail and which should go free. It

is a body called the Afghan Review Board. They have said that the

Americans have not been providing them with all of the intelligence

material that they need. TRANSLATION: If they could show us

intelligence files with these details, that this person was caught

at this location, detained at this time and he had this weapon and here

are his biometrics with the ballistics and the forensics, we

would accept this as significant. We have not seen this in any of the 764

files that we have had. But the American military were saying the

exact opposite. I went to an off-camera briefing with senior US

personnel. They told me that the Afghan review board were wilfully

ignoring forensics evidence. They cited examples. The board had said

that explosive residue was inadmissible as evidence because it

was floating in the wind all over Afghanistan. They said that the

board had also dismissed a fingerprinted confession, obtained

from a legend Taliban commander, as having been generated by American

computers. But the Americans admitted to rejecting the names of

intelligence sources from files they had shared with the Board. Trust, it

seemed, was in short supply on both sides of this argument between

suppose it allies. The sources and methods that we used to gather

intelligence on insurgents will remain classified. We do not want to

give away to the enemy how we are able to detect what they are too. We

are declassifying is what is possible but most of these cases are

not dealing with classified information. Numerous cases involve

fingerprints found on explosives, by a metrically identified. When I

returned to Bagram Prison it was visiting time. Many of these

civilian visitors would have spent days crossing the country in order

to have less than an hour of time with incarcerated male relatives.

Once at Bagram Prison, they had to pass through several hours of

searches, checks, and biometric scans. Before being let in under the

watchful eye of heavily armed Afghan and American troops. Security at

visiting time was very tight. This was the visiting area where the

prisoners got to spend some time with their relatives. Although in

most cases, they were separated by a pane of toughened glass. None of the

prisoners are disabled. The wheelchairs are used because the leg

irons worn by the inmates mean that they cannot walk at speed. It is a

reminder of the security threat which of these men are said to pose.

After the visit is finished, I met one prisoner's mother. TRANSLATION:

I feel very bad because of all of this worrying about him. They are

all suffering from psychological problems now. This is life. His

father Brothers and sisters come to see him and they all leave, crying.

It is very difficult to see our son like this. They are lots of others

like my son here. For gods sake, they should think them. He only had

one court hearing in 1.5 years. The high security courtroom for trying

the detainees was just outside the prison walls. We had permission to

film here from the Attorney General's office in the capital and

we had a letter to prove it. -- Kabul. We were approached by men

from the Afghan and US intelligence services, suddenly. We are getting

blocked from accessing the judge's area. They tell us that we don't

have permission to go there and film. In the end, an American in

civilian clothes told us to stop filming altogether. It raises

questions about just how much control the Afghan side really has

over this place after last year's Candover from the Americans. Bagram

has a long history. When you look at what it symbolises now, do you find

that disturbing? Terrible. Ugly. Extremely disturbing. One of the

reasons our relation is not good with America. One of the important

reasons. At least the fate of the prisoner there, the DK me that, --

of the DK me there, is now more than ever before in our hands than in

American hands. -- detainee there. No doubt, the Americans are trying

to retain some control. That is why they had been resisting it all

along. It is now a way where we decide to act and we can, as we have

shown. Towards the end of May visit, the general organiser group Mill

Force am of the long-term inmates. -- my visit. -- organised a group

meal. It was something he organised just for our cameras. One of the

guards told me that the food was better than usual and these

prisoners were normally shackled. After lunch, the general then

organised a public meeting for the prisoners to speak their minds to

our cameras. They certainly did that.

This man is said that he had been arrested four years ago and being

tortured by Americans for 70 days in a nearby facility that he called the

Black Jail. Claims about secret prisons in

Afghanistan are not you -- are not new but they have never been proved.

Senior US monetary figures later told me that they had been informed

of this man's allegations and were investigating. Shortly afterwards,

they e-mailed me, saying that the prisoner had never previously

complained about being tortured. They added that they had information

which suggested that some inmates may have been coached by a member of

the staff at the Bagram complex to make false claims about abuse to the

BBC. Although we explained that several other inmates had also

referred to abuse in a black jail, they denied that the Department of

Defence had ever operated any black sites or secret prisons.

As my visit to the jail came to an end, it struck me how the place was

a symbol of a much wider misunderstanding between? Cultures

and two different visions of what had happen in this country. --

between two cultures. All the men who were praying in this room were

among those I had met on May one day in Bagram prison. -- on May one day.

They included the 16-year-old Mohibullah who told me that he now

hated the Americans. Was he a farmer as he claimed or a dangerous

insurgent as the US had told me? Either way, within two weeks of my

visit, he and 64 other inmates would be freed. You mentioned of these

prisoners that are about to be released and the review board has

declared an innocent but they say that they have Afghan blood on their

hands. They are criminals? They always say that. How else would they

have an excuse to keep someone in prison? Except to accuse them of

something. How were judicial bodies, our judiciary, our

intelligence had nothing on them. When the Americans brought their

concerns to me, I personally conducted a review of the issue.

Believe it or not, after 12 years, he will not admit that there is an

insurgency in his country. He is reluctant to admit that there are

people trying to overthrow his government. He looks at these people

as we would Brothers. Most Afghans look at the Taliban remnants as

people trying to destroy their lives. Afghan TV ran these pictures

on pedigree 13 as the detainees were released. Whether they were all

innocent as the Afghans say or heading back to the battlefields of

the Americans fear, it remains to be seen. The Afghan decision to set

them free in the face of such strong American objections is a further

example of just how sour the relationship between these supposed

allies has become. It has come at a time when levels of

Taliban violence have been growing and the targets are not just a

military forces in the provinces. This is all that is left of an

upmarket Kabul restaurant. On January 18, it was the sight of the

deadliest ever attack on foreign civilians in this country. The

suicide bomber took out the armed guards at the entrance and then two

gunmen opened fire on the customers and staff inside.

21 civilians were killed here, 13 foreigners and eight at hands. Some

were just trying to earn a living and others are trying to have a

night out. -- eight Afghans. The walls are still scarred with bullet

holes from the gun battle that followed and worse. There is blood

right here. It is a gruesome reminder of the brutality of the

conflict here. The heated environment into which the disputed

prisoner releases have taken place. While the Americans are handing over

power to the Afghans and pulling out most of their forces, they want to

keep some military bases here along with about 10,000 troops. That will

not happen unless the treaty called the bilateral security agreement or

BSA is signed and to date, president cars I has refused to put pen to

paper. If I want to give the Americans a basis, I don't have the

right to ask something in return? -- President Karzai. They have promised

me money in return. I don't care about money. I want to bring peace

and stability to Afghanistan. I don't care about... In my view,

these are the two countries which can launch of the peace process with

the Taliban. Who are in charge of it one way or another. There are

accusations that you are refusing to sign the agreement because you are

more concerned about your own legacy than the future of Afghanistan. Of

course I'm concerned with my legacy. I don't want to sign something that

I don't think is good for Afghanistan. Under the

circumstances. But no, immediately, it is not my legacy. It is what I

want from this agreement with the Americans to bring to the Afghan

people. You have always heard me speak of peace. The Taliban killed

my brother. The next day, I went to say that they are our brothers. They

are Afghan people and I want peace. The only thing that will bring the

Taliban to the table is if they believe that they are not winning.

Right now, I greatly fear that we will be withdrawing and we will see

another Iraq which is now deteriorated into chaos. That was an

abject failure. We are seeing that same movie again in Afghanistan.

Every Friday evening, football games are played out in the shadows of the

battle scarred palace in Kabul. The young men he hoped for better days

to come but the shell shattered building is a stark reminder of

Afghanistan's brutal recent history. As foreign forces pull out after 13

years of fighting, and the peaceful future for this long-suffering

country looks as far away as ever. Meteorologists refer to the start of

March as the start of spring.