McClatchy: U.S. Kept Silent About Afghan Mass Grave Removal
by Meteor Blades
Thu Dec 11, 2008 at 03:29:18 PM PST
Tom Lasseter at McClatchy is reporting an important story about how U.S. officials have failed to notice the digging up of a mass grave of perhaps 2000 prisoners of war in Afghanistan. The excavation removed evidence of a possible war crime. What U.S. officials knew, and whether they may have been involved in any way in covering up the removal of bodies from the grave, is unknown.
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.
Farid Mutaqi, a senior investigator for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, told McClatchy: "You can see only a hole. In the area around it you can find a few bones or some clothes. The site is gone . . . as for evidence, there is nothing."
Speculation by McClatchy sources is that this mass grave was excavated with heavy equipment so that Dostum could avoid prosecution for war crimes.
And U.S. involvement? The Cheney-Bush administration has been silent about the digging up of the grave. When the killings of the prisoners occurred in 2002, administration officials denied they knew about until it appeared in media reports.
However, the fact that U.S. special forces and CIA operatives were working closely with Dostum in late 2001, when the killings took place, has fueled suspicions that the warlord got a free pass.
The U.S. Defense Department has said that it found no evidence of American involvement or presence during the 2001 incident. If there was an investigation, however, its findings have never been made public.
In May 2002, a Physicians for Human Rights team dug a test trench in the area and uncovered 15 bodies, three of which were found to have died of asphyxiation. In November that year, in a top-secret cable from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the number of people killed during prisoner was said to "approach 2,000."
In response to the McClatchy exposé, Frank Donaghue, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights, said:
Investigative reports by McClatchy newspapers, as well as PHR’s own findings, have revealed that large sections of the Dasht-e-Leili mass grave in Northern Afghanistan have been dug up and removed.
PHR discovered this grave site in 2001. Reportedly, this site may have contained the bodies of as many as 2,000 prisoners who surrendered to the forces of Afghan warlord, General Abdul Rasheed Dostum and US commandoes in November 2001.
For seven years PHR has been investigating allegations that these prisoners were suffocated in cargo containers and dumped in the desert.
Reportedly, this evidence of potential war crimes was removed during the past year by the forces of General Dostum.
Our efforts on this case have involved PHR’s International Forensic Program, which has documented human rights violations and mass atrocities around the world.
PHR investigators discovered this mass grave in 2002, as reported in a Newsweek magazine special report. Our forensic scientists conducted an initial assessment of the grave for the UN and performed preliminary autopsies of several bodies at the site.
Since 2001, PHR advocated for the site to be secured and for a full investigation to be conducted by the US, the United Nations, and the Government of Afghanistan.
Now, in the wake of these revelations of the destruction of the grave site, PHR is calling on Afghan President Karzai and the United Nations to ensure that any remaining evidence at the site be secured.
The additional revelations by McClatchy newspapers, as well as documents, which PHR received this year under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that the Bush Administration blocked internal investigations into this alleged war crime.
Congress must hold a full, public inquiry into what the Bush Administration knew about these events and what they did or did not do about it. It’s time for truth and accountability, and a restoration of the rule of law. Respect for human rights demands nothing less.
Indeed so. Respect for human rights and the rule of law do demand nothing less.
Dostum, who has denied reports over the past few days that he is seeking asylum in Turkey, has a long and nasty record that has failed to stop U.S. officials from working with him. That makes him worthy of investigation aside from the mass graves story. For instance, Time reported on December 9:
Last year Samimi received a phone call from General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a U.S. ally who was appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as Army Chief of Staff, threatening to have her raped "by 100 men" if she continued investigating a rape case in which he was implicated. Dostum denies ever making such a threat and calls the rape allegation "propaganda." A witness to the phone call, military prosecutor General Habibullah Qasemi, was dismissed from his post soon after, despite carrying a sheaf of glowing recommendation letters penned by U.S. military supervisors.
Links to documents about Dasht-e-Leili that the Physicians for Human Rights acquired via the Freedom of Information Act are here and here.
PHR also has an Afghan resource site with information about the mass grave war crimes investigation here.
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