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Blair disinformation

CANA (CHRISTIANS AGAINST NATO AGGRESSION) UK STATEMENT JULY 1ST 2002  

Peter Schwarz @ the World Socialist Web Site www.wsws.org  ( see  News & Analysis Afghanistan ) 29 June 2002  reported further evidence of a massacre of Taliban prisoners.

"New reports from a human rights organisation and the German press have substantiated charges that US troops, aided by local and international allies, massacred thousands of defenceless Taliban in the course of the war in Afghanistan."

Schwarz reports how last January and February, a team from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a group based in Boston, visited a number of graves in the Mazar-i-Sharif and Sheberghan area & in a May 1 letter to the provisional Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, PHR wrote how the forensic team found evidence of recently disposed human remains @ gravesites they had visited. "While we are not in a position to verify the provenance of the remains in these sites, we heard speculation from well-informed international observers that one of these sites, near the city of Sheberghan, could have been a disposal ground of Taliban prisoners who had surrendered to the Northern Alliance in November and December 2001.”

The full report detailing the investigation (including photos) by the PHR and its letter to Karzai are available at

http://www.phrusa.org/research/afghanistan/report_graves.html#1

and

http://www.phrusa.org/research/afghanistan/karzai_letter.html).

To quote further from the Schwarz report: "Earlier this month, Irish documentary filmmaker Jamie Doran screened his uncompleted film Massacre in Mazar in a number of European cities.

"Witnesses appearing in the film gave more accounts detailing a massacre of up to 3,000 Taliban.

"The international press first reported treatment of Taliban prisoners that systematically breached the Geneva Conventions at the end of November.

"At that time, American aircraft and helicopters quelled an apparent revolt by prisoners at the fortress of Qala-i-Janghi near Mazar-i-Sharif, which was bombed from the air. Several hundred prisoners died as a result of the bombardment, with just 86 surviving the attack.

"The victims were members of the Taliban, who had previously surrendered in Konduz to troops led by the Uzbek general, Rashid Dostum, an ally of the Americans. Having surrendered, the Taliban were prisoners of war entitled to full protection under the Geneva Conventions.

"From the approximately 8,000 fighters who surrendered in Konduz only 500 to 800 were taken to Qala-i-Janghi. Soon information emerged that other Taliban had been murdered.

 Two of the mass graves that they investigated were of recent origin.

"The team quoted testimony from inhabitants of the region, who claimed to have seen scores of bodies unloaded from container trucks and buried in the desert by bulldozers.

"According to these witnesses, between 200 and 300 of the prisoners from Konduz were packed into each of the containers, which were ostensibly being used to take them to the prison at Sheberghan.

"En route, approximately half of the captives suffocated or were killed by shots fired by soldiers into the airtight containers. Others were executed as the containers were unloaded into a mass grave in the desert.

"According to the witnesses American soldiers were present during this massacre."

"The German weekly newspaper Die Zeit recently sent two reporters, Giuliana Sgrena and Ulrich Ladurner, to Masar-i-Sharif to carry out their own investigation. Their report confirms many of the statements made in the film by Jamie Doran.

"In the latest edition of Der Zeit, they write: “It is not difficult to find people in Sheberghan who can relate what took place in the desert of Dascht-i-Laili. Without exhibiting any degree of excitement they tell of executions and Taliban suffocated in containers.”

"The reporters quote the inhabitant of a nearby village, who said: “I counted at least 13 containers. They were transported on lorries. It was daytime when they arrived.” Asked how these men died, the villager responded: 'We were told that they had suffocated in the containers, but some of the containers were splattered with blood.'

"According to the report in Die Zeit, the local population was certain that the operation took place in the presence of American soldiers:

“We enquired further. No one doubted that the Americans had taken part. Even at higher levels there are no doubts on this issue.”

The World Socialist Web site report concludes:

"the various reports emerging from Afghanistan present a horrific picture of a ruthlessly conducted colonial war.

"These accounts contrast sharply with the official image projected by the Pentagon and the media, and indicate that the US military is guilty of major war crimes.

"There are increasing demands for a full and independent investigation of what took place in Afghanistan.

"The Physicians for Human Rights is demanding that the mass graves be protected to ensure no evidence is removed from the site or destroyed. The United Nations has also taken up this demand. However, neither the Afghan government nor Washington has responded to these calls. The European Parliament plans to discuss the issue at the beginning of July."

Anyone concerned with human rights violations world wide is advised to read the whole document.

The  World Socialist Web site report follows on from allegations of  Holocaust conditions pertaining for prisoners of war in Afghanistan made by an EU observer in May 2002. 

CANA UK holds the British Government as complicit in these war crimes, both  in violating the Geneva Conventions & encouraging the Americans to do the same, & in the restriction of reporting of these dreadful events.

CANA UK believes Mr Blair is as usual engaging in disinformation when he told the UK Parliament today July 1st it is "inconceivable" that any US troops involved in so called peacekeeping exercises could ever be prosecuted for war crimes before the newly established International Criminal Court.

For Blair to make this statement on day when news appears of yet another attack by US bombers on innocent civilians celebrating at a wedding party in Afghanistan is an obscenity.

The world demands that the leaders of the United  States who are the main perpetrators of war crimes internationally, either directly or through their surrogate forces, be arraigned before domestic & international tribunals.

Meanwhile the farce of the so called "trial" of Mr Milosevic (now temporarily suspended while the CIA continues endeavours to poison him, now he has discredited the prosecution case) should be discontinued immediately, on the simple ground of natural justice, that unless law applies to all it should apply to none.

CANA UK Director William Spring pledges to continue all legal efforts to establish violations of the Geneva Convention Act in the UK Courts. A bill of indictment against Defence Secretary Rumsfeld + supporting evidence will be settled & forwarded by William Spring to the UK Director of Public Prosecutions for further action later this month.

Further information telephone 44 208 376 1454

canauk@blueyonder.co.uk

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