<

Afghan Massacre Haunts the Pentagon
Thursday, September 19, 2002
(07:00)
By Luke Harding
The Mail & Guardian

The prisoners still in Shiberghan estimate that about 400 people suffocated to death during the journey. Other sources say the figure is between 900 and 1 000. The Physicians for Human Rights group from Boston, which identified the mass grave earlier this year, suggests that 2 000 to 3 000 of the 8 000 prisoners taken to Shiberghan died on the way. But The Guardian has obtained harrowing details that suggest their death was not a tragic accident but a deliberate act of revenge.

DASHT-i-LEILI -- M&G
The dead are not hard to find. Turn left into the desert after the town of Shiberghan and they lie all around -- some in shallow graves, others protruding from the sand.

The clothes they wore are still there: decaying black turbans, charred shoes, a prayer cap. In the nine months since they were buried the sun has bleached their bones white. But the jaws, femurs and ribs scattered across the desert are unmistakably human.

Nobody knows how many Taliban prisoners were secretly interred in this mass grave. But there is now substantial evidence that the worst atrocity of last year's war in Afghanistan took place here; most controversially, during an operation masterminded by United States special forces.

A 10-minute drive away is Shiberghan prison, where about 800 Taliban fighters who surrendered late last November at the town of Kunduz are held. Afghan warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum controls the prison; his mansion is nearby.
(More: MG.co.za News Source)
2002 © The Mail & Guardian Online.

Dan