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| Afghanistan |
| 200 to 400 prisoners died in metal containers |
| 2002-08-31 |
| A northern Afghan warlord admitted Friday that 200 Taliban prisoners died last year while being transported in shipping containers, some by suffocation, but he said the deaths were unintentional and mostly due to disease and injuries suffered in heavy fighting. And in sports today... Oh. They have more. What else is there to say? Reports that up to 960 captured Taliban fighters suffocated to death after they were crammed into unventilated metal shipping containers began emerging late last year. Earlier this week, the UN envoy to Afghanistan said the current government did not have the resources to investigate the claims. Nor do they care, particularly. If they did, they'd find the resources... Abdul Rashid Dostum, a top northern commander and ally of United States in Afghanistan, said in a statement that the Taliban fighters died during a four-day operation in November to transfer them from Kunduz, which had just been captured by the then-opposition northern alliance, to the northern city of Shibergan. "In no case were any prisoners killed. In no case was there any intention that they should die in containers," Dostum said in a joint statement with three other northern alliance commanders. The statement said 200 out of 400 people died. "It is essential to recognize that most of these died of wounds from bombing and fighting in Kunduz ... but also due to disease, suffocation, suicide and a general weakness after weeks of intense fighting and bombardment," the statement added while justifying mass killings. Sympathy meter hasn't twitched yet. Bad Guys fight like cornered rats at Konduz, then expect to be hugged and kissed when the city falls? I don't think so. The prisoners were meant to be transferred to a prison in Shibergan, but investigators for the U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights said hundreds died en route instead and ended up at a mass grave site in nearby Dasht-e-Leili. If they'd put them in with the other prisoners they'd have started to stink... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #2 and this is bad.....why? I think the prisoners soon to be released to (again) fight against us and an elected representative government in Kabul should again be packed in similar containers...just a lot more tightly, especially if there was only a 50% attrition rate |
| Posted by: Frank G 2002-08-31 16:36:09 |
| #1 I don't condone mistreatment of prisoners, but the Taleban were intentional non-signatories to any convention. Their apologist websites - azzam.com, khurasaan.com, al neda.org, islamicawakening.com, etc - all celebrated their disassociation from non-shariah law. And they did carry out massacres such as that Mazhar-e-Sharif (Ironically, I think that means "manifestation of innocence" in Arabic). They set themselves up for revenge by paramilitaries. What goes around... |
| Posted by: Allah the Dog Faced God 2002-08-31 15:30:28 |