Inside the abandoned US detention centre where Afghan terror suspects were ‘tortured’
The notorious detention centre built by the Americans inside the huge Bagram military base is a terrifying place even when empty.
It’s known locally as Afghanistan‘s Guantanamo. Those who were held here feared they’d never leave. Many who did leave have never been the same since.
We’re the first Western television team to get inside the infamous prison. Both the Americans and their Afghan security partners are particularly sensitive about outside eyes seeing inside.
The Taliban freed prisoners when they took over Bagram airbase
Each room is dark and filled with abandoned belongings
A mechanic shop inside the facility
Abandoned American ammunition and oil kegs
We squeeze through twisted sheets of corrugated metal where captives forced their way out hours after the capital fell to the Taliban and only weeks after the US soldiers left the base in a hurry. The Taliban unlocked all the cells holding those who hadn’t been able to break out themselves – among them hundreds suspected of being ISIS-K prisoners, from an offshoot of the so-called Islamic State terrorist group.
Now the Taliban is manning the gates of the huge sprawling military base which grew into a small city and was the coalition’s main military hub during its 20-year-long military mission. Originally built by Russian invaders in the 1950s, the Americans extended it to include a gym, a 50-bed hospital and the much-feared detention centre.
A deflated American football has been left behind
Taliban fighters pray inside the cells
In the detention centre, they housed and interrogated the Taliban fighters they caught in battle or suspects they feared would end up on the battlefield.
Some were viewed as high-ranking terror suspects but there were also hundreds of ordinary Afghans – farmers, stallholders, students and Taliban sympathisers deemed dangerous or suspicious.
They were held, sometimes for years, without charges or trials. The stories of torture, water boarding, abuse, beatings and mistreatment were rife.
It’s thought the prison could have been a breeding ground for radicalisation
Former president Hamid Karzai told Sky News in an interview he gave before the Taliban pushed out the Ashraf Ghani government that the existence of the Bagram detention centre and the terrible stories emanating from within it infuriated him and caused multiple fallouts between him and the American politicians he dealt with.
He never forgave his American partners for what happened inside Bagram detention centre.
“They were meant to come here for peace, not bomb villages and hold captives,” he told us in July.
Every dark, dank corridor and every ransacked room in the detention centre holds a story – and all of them seem grim.
The prison was known locally as Afghanistan’s Guantanamo
The Taliban flag flies on a checkpoint at the entrance to Bagram
There are dozens of scattered photographs of terrified-looking men, many of them young, staring out at the camera dressed in their orange prisoner suits, pressed up against height charts.
The interrogation rooms are heavily padded to ensure they’re sound-proofed and the lack of electricity means we are stumbling around in the dark using the lights on our mobile phones, which adds to the eeriness.
In one storeroom we find black-out goggles and earmuffs, probably used for sensory deprivation alongside piles and piles of orange suits, next to cable ties of varying lengths.
We’re joined by groups of Taliban fighters who are seeing the centre for the first time and now stand on top of the cages peering through them just like the US soldiers once did.
The Talibs wind their way down the steps leading into a windowless bricked ground floor where there are a series of steel cages which each housed about 30 captives.
Taliban fighters flip through books and rifle through the belongings
There’s a silence hanging over everyone looking at these scenes.
A few weeks ago, there were about 5,000 prisoners here and the noise must have been a constant cacophony of desperation.
The Talibs poke at the belongings – blankets and clothes and the odd orange suit left behind – and kiss every book of the Koran they see. One shakes his head.
Then spontaneously they pull out prayer mats and drop to their knees to pray for the thousands who lost so many years of their lives here.
Some of the Taliban militants drop to their knees to pray
Their American military guards believed they were routing the war on terror and holding some of the more dangerous men in the country – but without any due justice, many of the Afghans see what happened here very differently.
Even American commanders now admit holding hardened terror suspects alongside Taliban sympathisers and common criminals here led to mass indoctrination and radicalisation.
One of the praying Taliban fighters is in tears, constantly wiping his eyes. All of them are shocked and vowing revenge.
One of the Talibs starts crying and wiping his eyes
“All of the Talibs are ready to carry out suicide car bombs to avenge this,” one tells us.
“They’re not scared… We do this for Allah, not profit… America has lots of money but they’re not willing to blow themselves up. The Taliban will sit in a car with a bomb, drive it and set it off. We’ve made sacrifices before and after this we will again. We are suicide attackers.”
An armed Taliban fighter looks on
One of the Taliban who was held in Bagram for two-and-a-half years tells us he was tortured.
“Every time you broke one of their rules – like having a nail cutter – you were punished and tortured,” says Aziz Ahmad Shabir.
“They put me in a room alone for a month and made the cell very cold. Now I’m mentally sick and my mind is not working well… in the two-and-a-half years I was held here, a lot of damage was done to my head.”
He tells us he was a farmer when he was seized.
“Why were you arrested?” I ask.
“Because I’m a Muslim,” he replies, smiling.
We may never know the specifics of what any of them were accused of now but that assessment – which is now widespread in Afghanistan – is a dangerous one to be held against the coalition forces.
The Bagram detention facility may end up being known as one of the most successful recruitment centres for anti-Western terror networks.
Mark Carney’s Liberal Party has won the election in Canada, according to Canadian broadcasters, but it is too soon to say whether they will form a majority government.
Mr Carney, who took over as prime minister after Justin Trudeau stepped down earlier this year, has beaten the leader of the Conservative Party Pierre Poilievre, according to CBC and CTV News projections.
However, it is too soon to say whether the Liberals will form a majority government, they added. The party has not yet secured the 172 electoral districts it needs for a majority.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. Pic: Reuters
The election initially appeared to be a clear-cut race for the opposition Conservatives, who were enjoying a double-digit lead over the Liberals before Mr Trudeau resigned, and an intervention by Donald Trump led to a surge in support for Mr Carney’s party.
Mr Trump has repeatedly called for Canada to become the 51st US state since he was elected president for a second time and has imposed sweeping tariffs on Canada.
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Trump on why he wants Canada to be 51st state
Mr Carney has vowed to take a tougher approach with Washington over its tariffs and has said Canada will need to spend billions to reduce its reliance on the US.
Liberal supporters celebrate after Canadian broadcasters project their party has retained power. Pics: Reuters
If Mr Carney’s party only captures a minority of the House’s 343 seats, he will be forced to negotiate with other parties in order to stay in power.
Such minority governments rarely last longer than two-and-a-half years in Canada.
Canadians went to the polls after 11 people were killed in a deadly attack at a Vancouver street fair over the weekend that led to the suspension of campaigning for several hours.
Police have ruled out terrorism and said the suspect is a local man with a history of mental health issues.
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Mr Carney previously ran Canada’s central bank and later became the first non-Briton to become governor of the Bank of England.
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Power supplies have been returning in Spain and Portugal after large parts, including the capitals Madrid and Lisbon, were hit by a huge outage on Monday.
Millions of people were caught up in the chaos after the mass blackout brought many areas to a standstill, with trains stopping, planes grounded, internet and mobile phone services cut, traffic lights and ATMs down, and some routine hospital operations suspended.
Spain‘s interior ministry declared a national emergency and the two countries’ governments convened emergency cabinet meetings as officials tried to find out what caused the outage which started around 12.30pm (11.30am UK time).
A police car passes as vehicles wait in a traffic jam on the other side of the road in Madrid. Pic: Reuters
People gather outside Barcelona-Sants train station during a power outage. Pic: Reuters
Blackouts in Spain and Portugal: Follow latest updates
About half the electricity supplies in Spain have now been restored by the grid operator, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Monday evening, adding the rest should be back by Tuesday.
In a televised address, Mr Sanchez said authorities have not yet worked out what had caused the blackout in the Iberian Peninsula and were not ruling anything out.
He asked the public to refrain from speculation, and urged people to call emergency services only if really necessary.
Eduardo Prieto, the head of operations at Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica, said the event was unprecedented, calling it “exceptional and extraordinary”.
Meanwhile, Portugal‘s Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said power in his country would be fully restored in the coming hours.
He said all the state services remained operating in the country despite all the difficulties. He also said there was “no indication” a cyberattack was the cause.
Read more: Analysis – How electricity grids fail
A chef in Madrid works in a dark kitchen with the aid of his phone’s flashlight. Pic: Reuters
Fans are seen after Madrid Open matches were suspended due to a power outage. Pic: Reuters
‘Rare atmospheric phenomenon’
Portugal’s grid operator Ren claimed the outage was caused by a fault in the Spanish electricity grid, related to a “rare atmospheric phenomenon”.
Ren says that, due to extreme temperature variations in Spain, there were “anomalous oscillations” in very high-voltage lines.
It also says that given the complexity of the issue, it could take up to a week for the network to fully normalise again.
It comes as France briefly lost power following the outages in Spain and Portugal, French grid operator RTE said.
Parts of Madrid underground were evacuated and traffic lights in the city were not working, according to local media.
Play was suspended at the Madrid Open tennis tournament due to the outage – with Britain’s Jacob Fearnley forced off court in a critical moment during his third-round tie with Grigor Dimitrov.
The loss of power affected scoreboards and the camera above the court. Organisers later announced the tournament would not be able to resume on Monday, with afternoon and evening sessions cancelled.
Airports affected
Aena, which runs international airports across Spain, said earlier that “some incidents were occurring” at the airports due to the outage.
The company added in a statement: “Contingency generators are active. Please check with your airline, as there may be disruptions to access and ground transportation.”
People ‘had nowhere to go’
Maddie Sephton, who is from west London, was on the Madrid Metro when the power outage occurred.
“We got on the train and everything was fine,” she told Sky News. “But then everything went dark.”
She was stuck on the train for 20 minutes until a staff member opened the doors manually.
A metro worker passes underneath barricade tape to enter Legazpi Metro station after the outage. Pic: Reuters
A view shows a transmission tower during a power outage near Barcelona in Spain. Pic: Reuters
Mrs Sephton says she was on her way to the airport at the time – and had to exit the station by walking up 15 flights of stairs with her luggage.
“No lifts are operating – making it difficult for elderly people with limited mobility,” she added.
Above ground, she said that “everyone is just standing around and waiting”.
Medical staff relocate a patient in Pamplona, Pic: AP
Bars were unable to take card payments, cash machines are down, and traffic lights weren’t working either.
“I currently don’t have any internet service and just €15 in my wallet – I can’t withdraw any money from the ATM,” she added.
“A couple have offered to let us get a ride in their taxi to the airport. Their flight is at 4.30pm so they’re pretty relaxed – but my flight back to London is at 3pm and I’m nervous.”
Mrs Sephton said: “People are just walking but have nowhere to go, and nothing to do.”
Traffic lights have stopped working following a power outage in downtown Lisbon, Portugal. Pic: AP
People try to board a crowded bus after the subway stopped running following a power outage in Lisbon, Portugal. Pic: AP
Meanwhile, thousands of passengers had to be evacuated after the blackout left the metro service in Barcelona without power.
The blackout was also reported to have forced the closure of the city’s tram system and rendered some traffic lights there inoperable.
It has also impacted medical facilities, with hospitals in Madrid and Catalonia forced to suspend routine medical work. Staff have been able to attend to critical patients using power from backup generators.
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It comes as Metrovalencia, the urban rail system, encompassing both metro and tram services in Valencia, said traffic in the city was “disrupted” due to a “general power outage in the city”.
The outage also hit the Portuguese capital Lisbon and surrounding areas, as well as northern and southern parts of the country.
Portugal’s government said the incident appeared to stem from problems outside the country, an official told national news agency Lusa.
“It looks like it was a problem with the distribution network, apparently in Spain. It’s still being ascertained,” Cabinet Minister Leitão Amaro was quoted as saying.
We rarely think about how essential and reliable electricity grids are until they fail.
Now, millions of people across Spain, Portugal and parts of France are likely thinking of little else.
While local power cuts are fairly common, what’s happened across the Iberian peninsula is something far more extreme.
Much of Spain and Portugal’s electricity transmission system collapsed in seconds including in major cities Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona and Seville.
Blackouts latest: ‘Rare atmospheric phenomenon’ behind outages
It’s likely the outage will surpass Europe’s largest blackout to date when 56 million people in Italy and Switzerland lost power for up to 12 hours in 2023.
The cause of the outage is unclear. Portugal’s grid operator has blamed a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” that caused “anomalous oscillations” in high voltage power lines in Spain.
Spain’s grid operator has yet to respond to that or provide an update on the cause. But it’s unlikely whatever caused the outage was a single, localised event.
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Mayhem in Spain after major power outage
A major power line going down can cause a large outage – as it did in 2021, when an interconnector between France and Spain failed leaving a million people without power for a few hours.
But it’s unlikely to cause a system-wide failure of the kind we’re seeing now.
However, when things do start to fail on a power grid, they can cascade uncontrollably.
Keeping a grid running is a constant and highly complex balancing act.
People outside a terminal at Lisbon Airport during the blackout. Pic: Reuters
Spain’s mains AC electricity supply grid, like ours in the UK, runs at 50Hz. That frequency is based on the speed at which generating hardware such as gas and nuclear turbines spin.
If there are sudden fluctuations in power supply or demand – a power station failing or a high voltage power line going down, for example – the frequency of AC power in the transmission lines changes and circuit breakers trip to protect either the transmission network, or power plant hardware from burning out.
To prevent such failures, grid engineers constantly measure and forecast supply and demand to keep the grid balanced.
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To protect the system in emergencies, they occasionally have to “shed load” by cutting power to parts of the grid – the reason we’ve all experienced the occasional short-lived power cut.
But if balance is lost, a grid can fail in a domino effect with sections of the grid tripping, then power plants shutting down to protect themselves from the drop in demand, one after another.
The challenge now, and it’s a nightmare for Spain and Portugal’s power engineers, is to gradually restore the grid section by section while maintaining the balance of supply and demand.
Act too fast, and the grid can trip again. Take too long and some power plants or substations might struggle to restart – especially if they rely on battery power to do so.
While some regions of Spain have already had power restored, and Portugal says its power will be back to normal within hours, it could take much longer for the system to be fully restored.
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