Today marks exactly 10 years since President George W Bush first opened the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and almost three years after President Obama promised he would close it. Today, 171 men are still trapped in that infamous jail.
But while the world focuses on them, we can't forget the thousands more – some children as young as 13 – who languish in less famous US jails across the world.
Bagram prison, in Afghanistan, holds 3,000 of them. Just 300 of Bagram's detainees have been charged and even US authorities admit many of the others are completely innocent. So why are they still there?
Where is my son?
Hamidullah Khan, who dreamed of becoming a doctor, was just 13 when he disappeared from South Waziristan, in Pakistan. It was the summer holidays and his father, Wakeel, had sent him to their family home in the north to collect some possessions. Hamidullah never returned.
Wakeel, an ex-soldier, tried to retrace his son's steps, asking everyone he could about the missing boy: relatives, old army contacts, the local Taliban. No one knew anything. He thought of going to the police, but given that they demand a 300 rupee bribe to replace an ID card, he asked himself: "How much would they charge to find a person?"
When Hamidullah went missing, Wakeel's wife started fasting. She kept it up for so long that she developed diabetes, and has lost most of her eyesight.
After a year, the Red Cross tracked Hamidullah down to Bagram prison in Afghanistan. No explanation has ever been offered for why a boy so young was picked up by Pakistani forces and taken hundreds of miles away, why he has never been charged, and why he has still not been released.
Lies and more lies
There are countless similar stories. Abdul Haleem Saifullah was 18 when he disappeared from the streets of Karachi, after dropping his father off at hospital for kidney treatment. Pakistan's ministry of foreign affairs claims he was picked up in Afghanistan's Zabul province in May 2009, but his family have letters written by him in Bagram dating from September 2005.
It's a pattern of confusion – or deliberate deception – all too familiar in America's disastrous "war on terror". After 9/11, the US was desperate to act quickly, and often seized on weak and faulty intelligence to snatch people from their streets and homes. They acted first and asked questions later.
While the detention centre at Guantánamo sparked the loudest international outcry, it's just one of countless prisons where the "disappeared" are taken. Today, Bagram holds roughly 18 times as many detainees as Guantánamo. America insists that the prisoners there are treated well, but fresh allegations of abuse surfaced just last week.
Time to act
Now, the courts have finally started to act. In December, Britain's court of appeal ordered its government to secure the release of another Bagram detainee, Yunus Rahmatullah, who was captured by British forces in Iraq in 2005. If he is not released by 18 January, the UK will be in breach of the Geneva conventions.
And another positive sign came last week, with the Guardian reporting that America plans to release several high-ranking Taliban leaders from Guantánamo, in preparation for peace talks. The news made headlines around the world.
Yet while negotiations for these high-profile releases continue, young men like Hamidullah continue to wait. "I still want to be a doctor," he tells his father in his letters. "It breaks my heart that God has taken that one wish away from me."
Take action: Support Reprieve's legal campaign for the release of Hamidullah, Yunus and others trapped in Bagram.
Learn more: Why hasn't Obama closed Guantánamo? Antony Romero, director of the ACLU, has written an excellent, damning account of President Obama's failure.
