British troops in Afghanistan are holding 80 to 90 people, some for as long as 14 months, without charging them. Lawyers call it a ‘secret prison’ akin to Guantanamo Bay, but the government says the facility is operated legally.

The prisoners, Afghan nationals suspected of crimes or having links to insurgents, are kept in detention at Camp Bastion, the largest UK base in Afghanistan, housing some 30,000 troops. Normally British troops are supposed to hold prisoners in custody for no longer than 96 hours, but under exceptional circumstances longer detention is possible.

Apparently there are almost a hundred such exceptional cases currently. Lawyers acting for eight of the men say some of the prisoners have been held without charge for up to 14 months, arguing that it could be amount to unlawful detention. They also say that the situation has been kept a secret from the public.

"The UK could have trained the Afghan authorities to detain people lawfully with proper standards and making sure that they are treated humanely," Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, told the BBC.

"Parliament has not been told that we have this secret facility," he added.

British Defence Secretary Philip Hammond confirmed the detention of the prisoners and their number, but not the time of their detention. He said Ministry of Defence did nothing wrong in the situation and denied the allegation that the government failed to report about the prisoners, saying both the current cabinet and the previous one informed the parliament.

Earlier the MoD defended the imprisonment at the base.

British forces approach an area during a patrol in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Reuters / Omar Sobhani)

"The UK's temporary holding facilities at Camp Bastion are regularly monitored by the ICRC," the MoD said in a statement, referring to the International Committee of the Red Cross, adding that the detentions “are legal under the UN mandate and comply with all applicable international obligations."

The secretary explained that the prisoners in question pose a threat to British troops if released, and that “protecting troops, whether it is from being murdered on the streets of London or the fields of Helmand province.”

But the MoD cannot hand them over to Afghan authorities because of the actions of their lawyers, Hammond said.

“What Mr. Shiner didn’t tell you is that last year his firm started proceedings against the department precisely to prevent us handing them over to the Afghan judicial authorities because of concerns of treatment of prisoners in the Afghan system,” he told BBC Radio 4.

In November last year Hammond issued a temporary ban on transfer of prisoners to Afghan detention after a farmer claimed that he had been tortured in a prison after being captured by UK troops and handed over to Afghani judicial.

Official Kabul is sensitive about detention of Afghans by the US-led military coalition and wants to see all of the prisoners under Afghanistan’s control. The handing over of the Bagram Prison from the US to Afghanistan, which had been delayed several times, was a major irritant in relations between President Hamid Karzai’s government and the Obama administration.

The lawyers have launched habeas corpus applications at the High Court in London, with a full hearing due in on July 23.

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