Skip to main content

New York Times: Bush Team Discouraged Probe of Mass Taliban Deaths





By VOA News
11 July 2009

A U.S. newspaper reports the Bush administration repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the 2001 mass killings of Taliban prisoners by the militia of an American-backed warlord.







The New York Times reports the FBI, State Department and Red Cross pushed for a probe, but the White House failed to act because the warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, was being paid by the CIA at the time of the killings.

Dostum and his fighters are accused of killing hundreds, and perhaps thousands of Taliban prisoners who surrendered after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. Authorities believe the bodies were placed in a mass grave found in Dasht-e-Leili in 2002.

The report says the Bush White House was also worried about undermining U.S.-backed Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who named Dostum to his defense team.

The U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights called for a criminal probe into the alleged massacre Friday.

The group says it has obtained U.S. government documents that show as many as 2,000 Taliban fighters were suffocated in container trucks by Dostum's forces and buried in the Dasht-e-Leili desert in November of 2001.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ASEAN pushes for resumption of N. Korea nuke talks

ASEAN and friends: Foreign Ministers from left, Vietnam's Pham Gia Khiem, South Korea's Kim Sung-hwan, Japan's Takeaki Matsumoto, Indonesia's Marty Natalegawa, and China's Yang Jiechi, hold hands during a group photo at the opening session of ASEAN Plus Three Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia, Thursday. (AP/Dita Alangkara) Associated Press, Nusa Dua | Thu, 07/21/2011 2:19 PM Foreign ministers from 10 Southeast Asian nations are calling for a speedy resumption of talks aimed at convincing North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. China, the US, Japan, South Korea and Russia had been negotiating since 2003 to persuade Pyongyang to dismantle the program in exchange for aid and other concessions. The North pulled out of the talks about two years ago after being censured for launching a long-range rocket. It has indicated a willingness in recent months to return to the table. The 10-member Association of Southeast As...
Post a Comment
Read more

Army: Gunmen kill Indonesia soldier in Papua

 Associated Press, Jayapura | Thu, 07/21/2011 6:47 PM An army officer says unidentified gunmen have ambushed Indonesia soldiers and killed one of them in the easternmost province of Papua. The chief army officer in Papua says soldiers are still searching for the gunmen. Maj. Gen. Erfi Triassunu said the ambush Thursday morning happened outside a village in the hilly district of Puncak Jaya. Triassunu said the victim was a first private killed by a shot to his head. No information was available on the other soldiers. The attack occurred one day after a military tribunal indicted three low-ranking soldiers for killing a civilian in Puncak Jaya last year. Papua is a former Dutch colony incorporated into Indonesia in 1969 after a U.N.-sponsored ballot. A small, poorly armed separatist movement has battled for independence ever since.
Post a Comment
Read more