[A-List] Afghanistan: the blowback continues

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

US Afghan ally 'tortured witnesses to his war crimes'

Rory McCarthy
Monday November 18, 2002
The Guardian

The United Nations has found evidence that a leading Afghan warlord and
strong ally of the US tortured witnesses to stop them testifying against him
in a war crimes inquiry, a senior UN source said last night.

General Abdul Rashid Dostam, an Uzbek warlord from northern Afghanistan, was
a part of the opposition Northern Alliance which overthrew the Taliban
regime with US help, and has been used extensively by the American military
in operations against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Witness accounts suggested that his troops were responsible for torturing
and killing up to 1,000 Taliban prisoners after the regime fell in November
last year. If confirmed, this would be the worst atrocity committed during
the US campaign in Afghanistan, and would raise questions about the role of
US special forces troops who were supervising the detention of the
prisoners.

Now a UN investigation into the killings has discovered that several
witnesses in the north have been jailed and appear to have been tortured.

"Not all of the allegations are proven yet, but we have enough evidence that
would lead us to believe there are serious concerns," the UN official said
in an interview with the Reuters news agency.

Some of the witnesses escaped to the capital Kabul and others were
interviewed in northern Afghanistan. Gen Dostam's stronghold is in
Sheberghan, close to the city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

"We could not examine them [the prisoners] physically and they were wearing
the traditional long dress, but people with the investigation team saw them
and said they were a mess, badly traumatised," the source said.

Reports have also suggested that two witnesses were executed by Gen Dostam's
men. He denies the claim and the UN team which looked into one of the
alleged executions found no hard evidence.

But a team of UN investigators which has just left northern Afghanistan is
expected to compile a damning report which threatens to embarrass the US
military and the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to rein
in the warlords.

Gen Dostam's spokesman, Faizullah Zaki, denied that witnesses had been
jailed and tortured. "We will take action against anyone who did these
things," he said.

Thousands of Taliban troops, including poorly educated young Pakistanis,
were rounded up after the battle of Kunduz in late November when the Taliban
made a desperate final stand in the north.

After they surrendered, the prisoners were transported for several hours in
sealed metal shipping containers to Sheberghan prison, one of Gen Dostam's
jails which was then under US control.

Prisoners have since described how they suffocated in the containers and how
hundreds among them were killed. Investigators have found evidence of a mass
grave in the desert at Dasht-i-Leili, close to the jail at Sheberghan.

Physicians for Human Rights, a group from Boston, identified the mass grave
earlier this year and conducted forensic studies there. They suggested that
up to 3,000 of the 8,000 prisoners taken to Sheberghan may have died.

Gen Dostam earlier this month promised to cooperate with the war crimes
investigation and protect witnesses.

But investigations into the deaths have been badly delayed. A UN inquiry
into the mass grave at Dasht-e-Leili was stalled for six months and many aid
workers in the area said he intimidated witnesses.