Before there was Guantanamo, there was Bagram, a US detention site near its giant airbase in Afghanistan, which came to be synonymous with torture and prisoner abuse. 

But when the US relinquished control of the prison, now called Parwan Detention Facility, to Afghan security forces in December 2014, Washington renounced responsibility for the men once held there. 

The handful of prisoners left behind became the Afghans’ problem, one of whom was a Tajik man, Said Jamaluddin, Internment Serial Number 4057, innocent collateral in the US’ so-called “war on terror”. 

He was repatriated from Afghanistan to Tajikistan, where he faces almost-certain ill-treatment, according to legal advocates from the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, who are working on his behalf.  

The clinic believes his brother Abdul Fatah, ISN 4058, was also forcibly sent back.

Afghanistan signed the Convention Against Torture, which stipulates that an individual must not be transferred to another country if there are “substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture”.

Regardless, the men are likely now home, a place that they regarded less than their Afghan prison, the law clinic said. 

The Yale clinic also fears that 38-year-old Musa Akhmadjanov, an Uzbek national, ISN 20370, might soon be rendered home too.

He is being held in a Kabul prison, according to the International Legal Foundation’s (ILF) Afghanistan country director Mohammad Waqar.

This would mean there might be just one US “war-on-terror” prisoner left, an Egyptian named Abu Ikhlas al-Masri, 55, ISN 21064.

The Pentagon alleged he was a member of al-Qaeda with ties to the Afghan Taliban and related Afghan and Kashmiri groups. No proof or any details about any of these allegations have been provided.

There has been no word of him for years and recent efforts to ascertain his whereabouts proved fruitless.

I worry that nearly two decades after 9/11, the US military continues to compromise its obligations under the Geneva Conventions to treat detainees humanely for the sake of expediency – and perhaps because they think no one is paying attention to these forgotten men.

Wells Dixon, lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights

Afghanistan does not publicly provide information on its security detainees.  

The offices of the Afghan president and the chief executive, the National Directorate of Security, and the Afghanistan Mission to the United Nations did not reply to Al Jazeera’s queries regarding the men. 

The Bagram prisoners were not classified as prisoners of war, which would have guaranteed them certain rights. They had even fewer rights than their counterparts in Guantanamo.

“The Bagram prison was a melting pot of innocent and guilty people from all over the region. After 9/11, thousands of non-Afghans were rounded up,” said Ahmed Rashid, a journalist, author and expert on Afghanistan and the region. “Many of them were totally innocent”.

The group included teachers, volunteers, and aid workers. 

“Nevertheless, they landed in Guantanamo and Bagram and the lack of due diligence … over the years just strengthened the assumptions that they were terrorists,” Rashid added.

From the onset, the “war-on-terror” ideology freed the American government from the rule of law. 

While the Afghans are now the culpable party when it comes to these men, “it is a mistake of the US’ making, and they need to stand up and take responsibility”, said Hope Metcalf of Yale Law School. “And they refuse to accept any responsibility.”  

At age 21, Musa Akhmadjanov, an Uzbek national, fled his country because he faced religious persecution. 

Akhmadjanov went first to the Russian Federation and got by working at carwash facilities and construction sites. Then, he travelled on to Iran, where he thought it would be easier to earn a living.  

In December 2009, he is said to have been deported to Afghanistan. After some time, and after allegedly refusing to pay a bribe to a commander at a border patrol station near Herat, he was handed over to the Americans. His detention in Bagram began on May 23, 2010.

He was subjected to physical abuse by both his American and Afghan captors during his years of detention, according to a report by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. 

Years later, Afghan courts found that there was no evidence that Akhmadjanov committed a crime, and in June 2015 cleared him to leave. But he was unwilling to return to Uzbekistan, where he feared the government’s authoritarian tactics.   

Waqar, from IFL, had been trying to gain access to Akhmadjanov and the Tajik brothers, but despite having the proper permissions, he was unable to.

In 2007, Jamaluddin, now 28, left home for Mashhad, Iran, accompanied by his older brother Abdul Fatah, 37, in hopes of studying there. Abdul Fatah returned home but reunited with his brother two years later in Afghanistan after the Iranians deported Jamaluddin for overstaying his visa.

A friend’s house in Kunduz in which the two were staying was raided by US personnel. No evidence of wrongdoing was found, according to reports. 

Regardless, in March 2009, the brothers were sent to Bagram.

As early as 2010, and in subsequent years, a detainee review board comprising US military personnel ruled that the brothers’ imprisonment was unwarranted.

In February 2015, after paying a heavy price of years in detention at the Parwan facility, the pair was found guilty in Afghan courts of visa-related violations, for which they could have faced a maximum of three years in prison.  

The siblings were sentenced to prison time but were eventually ordered free by the Afghan Supreme Court.

Again, fearing ill-treatment or worse if repatriated to Tajikistan and with no third country willing to accept them, they preferred to remain in an Afghan prison. 

Fatah, the elder brother, is said to be married with four children. He and Jamaluddin are the sons of Amriddin Tabarov, a former political activist who has been accused of being a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and of Jamaat Ansarullah, an alleged extremist group, according to the UN report. 

On several visits to see them in prison, Tajik officials have allegedly threatened the brothers, the report states.  

“The US government has a legal obligation and a moral responsibility to follow up on men who are transferred out of long-term military custody, and to ensure that they aren’t tortured or killed,” said Wells Dixon, a senior staff lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights and an expert on arbitrary detentions. 

“I worry that nearly two decades after 9/11, the US military continues to compromise its obligations under the Geneva Conventions to treat detainees humanely for the sake of expediency – and perhaps because they think no one is paying attention to these forgotten men.”

Patrick Shanahan, the acting secretary of defence, has arrived in Afghanistan on an unannounced visit amid a push by the United States to negotiate peace with the Taliban. 

Shanahan will meet Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, whose government was not part of major talks between the US and Taliban officials last month that officials hope could bring a breakthrough in the 17-year conflict.

“It is important that the Afghan government is involved in discussions regarding Afghanistan,” Shanahan told a small group of reporters travelling with him on the surprise trip on Monday.

The acting Pentagon chief said Washington has important security interests in the region and wanted to hear from the commanders on the ground.

Shanahan replaced Jim Mattis, who quit in December over policy differences with US President Donald Trump. 

The Taliban has refused to negotiate directly with Ghani’s government, calling it a “puppet” of the West. But Ghani’s allies in Washington insist Afghans should lead the peace process.

Kabul is also concerned that a sharp withdrawal of the nearly 14,000 US troops in Afghanistan could lead to chaos in the region. 

The Taliban wants all American troops withdrawn, and officials say that is at the top of the armed group’s list of demands in exploratory talks. 

Shanahan, who will also meet US commanders, told reporters he had so far not received any direction to reduce troops in Afghanistan. 

‘Fact-finding mission’

Al Jazeera’s Tony Birtley, reporting from Kabul, said Shanahan’s trip was “a fact-finding mission for him”. 

“His views on Afghanistan are not widely known, and he is expected to make them known after this visit,” Birtley added. 

Zalmay Khalilzad, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Afghan peace talks, said on Friday that although peace talks with the Taliban are in an early stage, he hopes a deal can be made by July.

That is when Afghanistan is scheduled to hold a presidential election.

Since being appointed last September as the US special representative for Afghan reconciliation, Khalilzad has carried out a number of rounds of talks with the Taliban and other regional representatives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, India, Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. 

The US envoy’s most recent talks were in Doha late last month where the two sides met for six days.

Washington wants assurances that Afghanistan will not harbour groups that would use the country as a base to launch attacks on the US. 

The next round of talks is due in Qatar on February 25.

In December, there were numerous reports that Trump planned to halve the number of US forces in Afghanistan. In his State of the Union address last week, the US president said any troop pullout would be linked to progress in peace talks. 

General Joseph Votel, the commander of US Central Command, appearing before Congress last week, offered a largely optimistic view of Afghanistan, saying the current manoeuvring between the US and Taliban negotiators is “our first real opportunity for peace and reconciliation since the war began”.

Votel noted that the Taliban are still capable of inflicting significant casualties on Afghan government forces.

Just last week, Taliban fighters killed some two dozen Afghan troops in an attack on an army base in northern Kunduz province.

In addition to battling the Taliban, the US and coalition forces in Afghanistan are focussed on an affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS), known as ISIS-Khorasan, comprised of foreign fighters largely from Pakistan.

Bipartisan border-security negotiations seeking to avert another government shutdown in the United States have broken down in a dispute over immigration detention policies, according to lawmakers and aides.

“The talks are stalled right now,” Republican Senator Richard Shelby told the Fox News Sunday TV programme, adding that he hoped negotiators would return to the table soon.

Efforts to resolve an impasse over border security funding extended into the weekend as a special congressional negotiating panel aimed to reach a deal by Monday.

The group of 17 lawmakers are hoping to reach a deal to allow time for the legislation to pass the US House of Representatives and Senate and get to President Donald Trump by Friday, when federal funding is due to expire.

Democratic Senator Jon Tester played down any breakdown in talks. “It is a negotiation. Negotiations seldom go smooth all the way through,” he told the Fox programme. He said he was hopeful a deal could be reached.

However, no further talks were reportedly scheduled.

Trump agreed on January 25 to end a 35-day partial US government shutdown without getting the $5.7bn he had demanded from Congress for a wall along the border with Mexico, handing a political victory to Democrats.

Instead, a three-week spending deal was reached with congressional leaders to give legislators time to resolve their disagreements about how to address security along the border.

One sticking point has been Democrats’ demands for funding fewer detention beds for people detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) than the Trump administration seeks. Republicans want to increase the number as part of their drive to speed immigrant deportations.

“I am hoping we can get off the dime later in the day or the morning,” Shelby said. “We have some problems with the Democrats dealing with ICE detaining criminals … They want a cap on them. We don’t want a cap on that.”

While a number of Republicans in Congress have made it clear they would not embrace another shutdown, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said he could not rule it out.

“You absolutely cannot,” Mulvaney, who is also Trump’s acting chief of staff, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “Is a shutdown entirely off the table? The answer is no.” 

But Mulvaney did signal that the White House would prefer not to have a repeat of the last shutdown, which stretched more than a month, left more than 800,000 government workers without paychecks, forced a postponement of the State of the Union address and sent Trump’s poll numbers tumbling.

As support in his own party began to splinter, Trump surrendered after the shutdown hit 35 days without getting money for the wall.

This time, Mulvaney signaled that the White House may be willing to take whatever congressional money comes – even if less than Trump’s goal –  and then supplement that with other government funds.

“The president is going to build the wall. That’s our attitude at this point,” Mulvaney said on Fox. “We’ll take as much money as you can give us, and we’ll go find the money somewhere else, legally, and build that wall on the southern border, with or without Congress.”

The president’s supporters have suggested that Trump could use executive powers to divert money from the federal budget for wall construction, though it was unclear if he would face challenges in Congress or the courts. One provision of the law lets the defense department provide support for counterdrug activities.

But declaring a national emergency remained an option, Mulvaney said, even though many in the administration have cooled on the prospect. A number of powerful Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have also warned against the move, believing it usurps power from Congress and could set a precedent for a future Democratic president to declare an emergency for a liberal political cause.

The fight over ICE detentions goes to the core of each party’s view on immigration.

Republicans favour tough enforcement of immigration laws and have little interest in easing them if Democrats refuse to fund the Mexican border wall. Democrats oppose the proposed wall and, in return for border security funds, want to curb what they see as unnecessarily harsh enforcement by ICE.

As most budget disputes go, differences over hundreds of millions of dollars are usually imperceptible and easily solved. But this battle more than most is driven by political symbolism – whether Trump will be able to claim he delivered on his long-running pledge to “build the wall” or newly empowered congressional Democrats’ ability to thwart him.

Predictably each side blamed the other for the stall in negotiations.

“We were, you know, progressing well,” Republican Tom Graves said on Sunday on ABC’s This Week. ”I thought we were tracking pretty good over the last week. And it just seems over the last 24 hours or so the goalposts have been moving from the Democrats.”

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, a Democrat, countered by telling the same show, “The numbers are all over the place.

“I think the big problem here is this has become pretty much an ego negotiation,” Yarmouth added. “And this really isn’t over substance.”

Thailand‘s electoral officials are set to rule on the surprise and unprecedented nomination of a Thai princess as a prime ministerial candidate for the country’s upcoming elections after her brother, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, called the move “inappropriate” and unconstitutional.

The Electoral Commission on Monday will also consider a complaint seeking to ban Thai Raksa Chart party, which on Friday shocked Thailand by announcing the candidacy Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya Sirivadhana Barnavadi in the long-delayed vote on March 24, the first since a military coup in 2014..

The nomination of the 67-year-old by the party, made up of supporters of ousted ex-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, broke with a longstanding tradition of members of the royal family staying above politics.

Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932, but the royal family wields great influence and commands the devotion of millions.

Ubolratana  was stripped of her royal title when she married a US national in 1972. She returned to Thailand in the late 1990s after getting a divorce. Although her formal title was not restored, she is regarded and treated as royalty by people in Thailand.

In a statement read out on all television stations within hours of her candidacy, King Vajiralongkorn said it was “inappropriate” for members of the royal family to enter politics.

The Election Commission has until Friday to rule on the princess’s candidacy. Its members are unlikely to disregard the wishes of the king, who while a constitutional monarch, is considered semi-divine in Thai society.

On Sunday, an activist said he would file a petition to disqualify the Thai Raksa Chart party.

“The royal announcement made it clear that the party violated electoral law,” Srisuwan Janya, secretary-general of the Association for the Protection of the Constitution, told Reuters news agency.

Thai Raksa Chart’s Executive Chairman Chaturon Chaisaeng declined to comment on Sunday on the request to disband the party. In a statement, the party said it “will move forward into the election arena to solve problems for the country”.

Electoral law forbids parties from using the monarchy in campaigns.

Thai Raksa Chart is one of several pro-Thaksin parties contesting the election. The military government’s leader, Prayuth Chan-ocha, is also contesting the race for prime minister as the candidate of a pro-army party. Prayuth was the Thai army chief in 2014 and led the coup that ousted a government led by Thaksin’s sister.

Parties loyal to former telecommunications tycoon Thaksin have defeated pro-establishment parties to win every election since 2001, but since 2006 each of their governments have been removed by court rulings or coups.

The gambit to nominate a member of the royal family could backfire on Thai Raksa Chart, said Titipol Phakdeewanich, dean of the faculty of political science at Ubon Ratchathani University.

“Things are now more unpredictable,” Titipol told Reuters.

If the party is dissolved, it could give more seats to anti-Thaksin affiliated parties, he said, although there are other parties loyal to the ex-premier contesting the election.

Thaksin, himself ousted in a coup in 2006, lives in self-imposed exile after being convicted by a Thai court of corruption in absentia. 

Mike Pompeo is heading for the EU’s eastern fringe — on a mission to make sure it’s looking west.

That’s how senior administration officials present the secretary of state’s upcoming visits to Hungary, Slovakia and Poland — as a chance to counter growing Russian and Chinese influence in areas as diverse as energy and technology.

But his host governments, facing accusations at home and abroad of backsliding on democracy and the rule of law, have seized on the trip to brand it as a seal of approval from Washington.

If he wants to avoid further alienating Western European allies frustrated and bewildered by the Trump administration’s foreign policy, Pompeo will have to strike a balance between praising his hosts and addressing the concerns of their critics.

Both Budapest and Warsaw are the subject of EU disciplinary proceedings, charged with putting the bloc’s fundamental values at risk, while Bratislava’s reputation has been badly tarnished by the murder of a journalist investigating mafia links that appear to reach into the heart of government.

Pompeo visits Hungary on Monday before traveling on Tuesday to Slovakia and then Poland, where he will co-host a conference on security in the Middle East with the Polish government.

A senior U.S. administration official, briefing reporters ahead of the trip, said a lack of American engagement in the region in recent years has created a vacuum.

The presence of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei in Central and Eastern Europe is an even bigger U.S. concern than its role in Western Europe, the senior official said, while also raising concerns about the role of Russia in the region.

During his trip, Pompeo will discuss defense ties and push allies like Hungary to diversify their energy supplies away from a dependency on Russia. He is also expected to announce new U.S. initiatives for the region, including on combating corruption — which is seen as a pathway for Russian and Chinese influence, the senior official said.

“We need to especially speak about Ukraine” — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán

Orbán boosted

The visit is a boost for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, the enfant terrible of the EU, whose government has pursued Trump-like policies such as harsh opposition to immigrants and strong verbal attacks on reporters. Earlier this month, American think tank Freedom House downgraded Hungary from “free” to “partly free” in its annual freedom survey for the first time since 1990, making it the only EU country to be categorized as partly free.

For its part, Washington has been much less vocal in its criticism of Budapest on issues such as media freedom than it was during the Obama presidency.

Under the Trump administration, there is “mutual respect” in the U.S.-Hungarian political relationship, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó told state media ahead of the trip, saying the visit is proof that Budapest is a “reliable” NATO ally.

In a nod to Orbán’s critics, Pompeo will also speak with leaders of nongovernmental organizations, which have faced growing government pressure in recent years.

Orbán’s opponents have also accused him of cultivating too close a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Western officials have voiced concerns that Budapest is turning a blind eye to Russian intelligence activities on Hungarian soil.

Last year, the Trump administration expressed rare public displeasure with Budapest over its refusal to extradite two suspected Russian arms dealers, whom it sent back to Russia instead.

One State Department official expressed surprise that Hungary is being singled out for a visit by the secretary of state.

“Visits are usually a reward,” the official said.

The official said that while Budapest had sided with the U.S. by opposing the U.N. global migration pact and not criticizing the U.S. Embassy in Israel’s move to Jerusalem, it has not delivered on U.S. priorities, such as keeping the Central European University in Hungary, supporting Ukraine, and sealing a new bilateral defense treaty.

While there are signs of progress on a defense deal, Orbán has refused to compromise on the university, which has been forced into moving its U.S.-accredited programs to Austria. And Hungary appears far from endorsing closer ties to Kiev. Orbán has accused Ukraine of violating the rights of ethnic Hungarians in the country to learn in their native language. Some diplomats say they suspect Budapest is using the issue as a pretext to prevent closer NATO-Ukraine cooperation, at Russia’s bidding.

“We need to especially speak about Ukraine,” Orbán said ahead of Pompeo’s visit. “In Hungary there’s a Ukrainian-friendly government, while in Ukraine there’s an anti-Hungarian government.”

Like its Hungarian counterpart, the Polish government is taking pride at being singled out by the Trump administration, particularly as the host of the Middle East conference.

That gathering may well be used by the U.S. to highlight its stark differences with Western European powers such as France, Germany and Britain, particularly on Iran. (Those differences will likely also be on display later in the week, when Pompeo stops off in Brussels to meet EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.)

“We were approached by the U.S. to act as co-host — we are one of the most pro-American nations in the EU and want to underscore that we should cooperate, especially in security issues,” said a Polish official, highlighting that not just Pompeo but also Vice President Mike Pence will be present in Warsaw.

The Polish government’s critics have taken aim at the visit, however, accusing the leadership of cozying up to Trump — who is generally unpopular in Europe — when Warsaw is growing isolated within the EU.

The government in Warsaw “will do anything to appear to be in the good graces of the U.S.,” remarked another State Department official. Although the remark came from an American, it was not intended as a compliment.

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