A journalist in northern Afghanistan, Islamuddin Mayel, says he feels he is in danger after he was briefly imprisoned and threatened following accusations that he stole a videotape apparently implicating the troops of General Abdul Rashid Dostum in war crimes.
| Dumbass. Did it hurt when you were dropped on your head? What did you think was gonna happen when you screwed with Mr. Ruthless? |
The tape is thought to contain footage subsequently used in a documentary, Massacre in Mazar, made by Irish journalist Jamie Doran. The film has not been given wide distribution but has been given small-scale screenings to select audiences in Europe, the first time in June 2002. Doran's film proved highly controversial because it alleged that United States forces were complicit in abuses which followed an unsuccessful uprising by Taleban at the Qala-ye-Jangi fortress in Balkh province. The film includes footage that it says shows captives who survived the re-capture of the fortress but who were then killed after being taken by Dostum's forces to Dasht-e-Erganak, a desert area east of Mazar-e-Sharif. It also claims that US special forces were present during the killings.
Speaking before the film was shown on the major German TV channel ARD in December 2002, US State Department spokesman Larry Schwartz condemned the film as "a documentary in which the facts are completely wrong and which unfairly depicts the US mission in Afghanistan". Mayel, one of many cameramen employed by Dostum in 2001, denies taking or selling any tape from the general's personal film archive. Now a reporter with Balkh Radio and Television's Uzbek service based in Mazar-e-Sharif , Mayel told IWPR that armed supporters of Dostum abducted him on October 21 from his home near the city. The men took him to a private prison in Jowzjan province, where he was interrogated and tortured for 10 days. He was released on October 31. |