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| Are Americans really hated because of their freedom? |
Earlier this week, the International Red Cross confirmed the existence of a secret "Black Jail" within the Bagram prison complex in Afghanistan, where high-value detainees were held and allegedly abused. Since then, additional details have continued to emerge.
The New York Times reported last November that former prisoners and human rights researchers had described how prisoners were held at the facility for weeks at a time without being allowed outside contact. The BBC also obtained accounts from prisoners who said they had been subjected to isolation, sleep deprivation, and cold.
The American vice admiral in charge of detainees, however, continued to deny both the existence of a separate facility and the allegations of abuse until the International Red Cross confirmed the claims.
Now The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder has been able to paint a clearer picture of the facility. His sources tell him that it is run by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC), whose operatives perform the interrogations on behalf of a subunit of the"elite counter-terrorism brigade" known as Task Force 714.
Task Force 714 was formerly commanded by General Stanley McChrystal, who now leads US forces in Afghanistan. According to Ambinder, DCHC is a "relatively new organization," which absorbed many of the previous functions and staff of the Counterintelligence Field Activity after CIFA was accused of spying on American political groups and was implicated in the Duke Cunningham scandal.
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