Nation contributor Anand Gopal appears on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman to discuss his story “America’s Secret Afghan Prisons” featured in the Feb. 15 edition of The Nation.

Under both the Bush administration and the Obama administration, these secret Afghan prisons continue to exist, as a major UN report concludes these secret detention practices “could reach the threshold of a crime against humanity.” The prisons have been used as holding centers for people to be taken to and interrogated. In his story, Gopal cites the Black Jail, which is ran by US special forces, and at least nine secret prisons where people have been tortured or killed–some while in prison and others during night raids.

“The night raids are the most unpopular actions of coalition forces, more so than air strikes that kill civilians,” he says. “They’re seen as a major affront to local culture, to the extent where people are actually scared in many places to actually go to sleep at night, because they don’t know who will burst through the door at night and take away their loved ones.”

Many Afghans have already began demonstrations as the night raids and kidnappings persist. Still, the US military fails to discuss the prisons, as they there are cloaked in a “shroud of secrecy.”

—Clarissa León

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