McClatchy: U.S. keeps silent as Afghan ally removes war crime evidence

U.S. keeps silent as Afghan ally removes war crime evidence

Map locating mass graves


By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers


DASHT-E LEILI, Afghanistan — Seven years ago, a convoy of container trucks rumbled across northern Afghanistan loaded with the human cargo of suspected Taliban and al Qaida members who'd surrendered to Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord and a key U.S. ally in ousting the Taliban regime.

When the trucks arrived at a prison in the town of Sheberghan, near Dostum's headquarters, they were filled with corpses. Most of the prisoners had suffocated, and others had been killed by bullets that Dostum's militiamen had fired into the metal containers.

Dostum's men hauled the bodies into the nearby desert and buried them in mass graves, according to Afghan human rights officials. By some estimates, 2,000 men were buried there.

Earlier this year, bulldozers and backhoes returned to the scene, reportedly exhumed the bones of many of the dead men and removed evidence of the atrocity to sites unknown. In the area where the mass graves once were, there now are gaping pits in the sands of the Dasht-e-Leili desert.

A U.N.-sponsored team of experts first spotted two large excavations on a visit in June, one of them about 100 feet long and more than 9 feet deep in places. A McClatchy reporter visited the site last month and found three additional smaller pits, which apparently had been dug since June.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/57649.html

http://chattahbox.com/world/2008/12/10/hundreds-of-bodies-found-in-argentina/

People always find the bodies.

More from your article...

"...NATO — which has command authority over a team of troops less than three miles from the grave site — the United Nations and the United States have been silent about the destruction of evidence of Dostum's alleged war crimes.

"The truth is that General Dostum went out with bulldozers and dug up those graves," Jowzjani charged. "I don't know why UNAMA" — the U.N. mission in Afghanistan — "hasn't said anything in this regard . . . maybe because of fears about his power, or maybe they made a deal."

Gen. Ghulam Mujtaba Patang, the commander of Afghanistan's national police in the north, said that he knew that the graves had been emptied. He noted that "the digging was done very professionally" and said that U.N. and NATO-led teams in the area were also aware. (While provincial reconstruction teams are led by individual nations, their military components are under NATO command.)

"I don't understand why they didn't secure the area," Patang said in an interview. Perhaps, he said, Western officials "are nervous" about the power that Dostum has locally and don't want to upset local security by pushing him on the matter..."



“Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death”

May 23, 2003

http://www.democracynow.org/2003/5/23/afghan_massacre_the_convoy_of_death

And a follow up story a year later

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/5/20/afghan_massacre_eyewitnesses_testify_that_us

"Today, on Democracy Now!, the U.S. broadcast premiere of a documentary film called “Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death.”

The film provides eyewitness testimony that U.S. troops were complicit in the massacre of thousands of Taliban prisoners during the Afghan War.

It tells the story of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military’s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz. According to eyewitnesses, some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison. Eyewitnesses say when the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds...

...“Afghan Massacre” is produced and directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran. Doran is has worked at the highest levels of television film production for more than two decades. His films have been broadcast on virtually every major channel throughout the world. On average, each of his films are seen in around 35 countries. Before establishing his independent television company, Jamie Doran spent over seven years at BBC Television.

The film was researched by award-winning journalist Najibullah Quraishi, who was beaten almost to death when he tried to obtain video evidence of US Special Forces’ complicity in the massacre. Two of the witnesses who testified in the film are now dead."


US holds thousands in Afghanistan

Friday, 21 December, 2001, 16:53 GMT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1723242.stm


Some additional links in this old DU thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=116&topic_id=5477&mesg_id=5477

9 minute clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-NpdoGkaEc

Full documentary - 50 minutes
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8763367484184611493

:hi:

site :(

I remember watching the documentary years ago.

:hi:

I don't see mentioned in all those slickly-produced military commercials on teevee. You suppose it's just in the brochures?