Dr Zaius
Chief Defender of the Faith
- Joined
- May 1, 2001
- Messages
- 8,902
- Reaction score
- 408
- Location
- The Forbidden Zone
- First name
- Don
- Country
-
Bad mojo...ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A U.S. human rights group is calling for a criminal investigation of alleged massacres carried out by a U.S. ally in northern Afghanistan as Newsweek reports a confidential U.N. memorandum has found evidence to justify such a probe.
Newsweek said Sunday that U.N. investigators concluded there was evidence of the deaths of hundreds of Taliban prisoners captured by U.S.-backed troops of Abdul Rashid Dostum.
The magazine said the U.N. investigators based their finding on an examination of a mass grave near Shibergan that "contains bodies of Taliban POWs who died of suffocation" while being transferred from Kunduz after Taliban resistance in northern Afghanistan collapsed in November.
The magazine said the memo referred to "political sensitivity" and recommended a halt to "all activities relevant to this case" until a decision was made on whether to push for a criminal trial, truth commission or other alternatives.
In Boston, the group Physicians for Human Rights, which also sent a team to investigate the reported massacre, said it had repeatedly asked the governments of the United States and Afghanistan as well as the United Nations to secure the gravesite and launch a comprehensive criminal investigation.
The human rights group urged an immediate criminal investigation be launched.
"The refusal of the United States to acknowledge and investigate the possibility that its military partner murdered hundreds or thousands of prisoners is a terrible repudiation of its commitment to hold perpetrators of war crimes accountable for their deeds," Leonard S. Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, said in a statement released Sunday.
If there were warcrimes committed there should be an investigation. If Allied forces participated or had knowledge of warcrimes they should be held accountable.