Pul-e-Charkhi prison and communist victims' mass grave

Pul-e-Charkhi (Persian: زندان پل چرخی), also known as Afghan National Detention Facility, is the largest prison in Afghanistan east of Kabul. Construction of the jail began in the 1970s by order of former president Mohammed Daoud Khan and was completed during the 1980s. The prison became notorious for torture and executions after the 1978 Saur Revolution as well as during the 10 year Soviet war that followed.[1] Between April 1978 and the Soviet invasion of December 1979, the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) under Nur Muhammad Taraki executed around 27,000 political prisoners at Pul-i-Charki.[2] The Afghan National Army's 201st Corps is based nearby Pul-e-Charkhi.

The prison has been renovated in recent years by the help of the United States Army Corps of Engineers. In 2007, the U.S. military began transferring some of its detainees from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to the Pul-e-Charkhi prison. By January 2008, 125 detainees from Bagram dentention facility and 32 detainees from the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp had been transferred to Pul-e-Charkhi.[3] By September 2009, the U.S. had transferred some 250 former detainees from its Guantánamo detention camp to Pul-e-Charkhi, often to the shock of their waiting families, according to Human Rights First (HRF).[4]

Mass grave

A communist-era mass grave, close to the Poli Charkhi prison, was discovered in December 2006 by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and is believed to hold some 2,000 bodies.[5][6] Officials of the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture believe that the massacre took place between 1978 and 1986 when the Moscow-backed communist presidents, Nur Muhammad Taraki, Hafizullah Amin and Babrak Karmal were in power.