Sentence goes on for foreign detainees in Bagram

The US handed over control of Afghanistan's Bagram jail to the Kabul government three months ago. But nothing has changed for dozens of foreign inmates still locked up inside "the Afghan Guantanamo".
In what has been described as a "prison within a prison", the US continues to operate within Bagram's walls.
After years of imprisonment, some 60 non-Afghan detainees -- mostly Pakistanis but also Saudis and Kuwaitis -- are still denied face-to-face access to lawyers and have not been charged with any crime.
The foreigners were exempted from the US handover in March of more than 3,000 Bagram prisoners to Afghan authorities. Their situation has prompted comparisons with detainees at the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

In a miserable hamlet with the soulless name "Village 105", lost in the vast Punjab wheatfields outside the town of Faisalabad, Abdul Razzaq keeps treasured photos of his brother Amanatullah Ali.
It has been nearly 10 years since they saw each other. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Ali went to Iraq -- for pilgrimage, his brother says.

But he and his friend Yunus Rahmatullah were arrested by British troops as suspected militants and handed over to the Americans.
Many fighters ended up being sent to Guantanamo. But because Ali and Rahmatullah spoke Urdu and not Arabic, they were taken to Afghanistan where US forces had translators to interrogate them.

"His wife contacted us and said she had had no news from him for six or seven months, then they searched for him but found no trace and we feared he had been kidnapped or killed," Razzaq said.
In 2005 the family received a letter, proof at last that he was still alive. Four years later Ali spoke to his family for the first time by phone.
"I asked him, 'Do you have any problems in jail?'" said Razzaq. "He replied, 'Jail is in itself the problem'."
Now every few months Razzaq travels the 450 kilometres from his village to Islamabad where he can see and talk to his brother by Skype at the International Committee of the Red Cross offices.

The line is cut by the Americans when they move onto topics deemed too sensitive.
A US defence official told AFP Washington considered the detainees to be "enemy combatants" and they do not enjoy legal rights that would be accorded to a criminal suspect in an American civilian court.