How many DUers remember the big debate about the Mazar-i-Sharif massacre, which included the death of CIA agent Mike Spann, the torture of John Walker Lindh, and the psychopath warlord Rashid Dostum? Looks like all of the stuff we suspected our government of doing is now coming to light.
New York Times on Northern Alliance war crime
A cover-up of US massacre at Mazar-i-Sharif
By Barry Grey
13 July 2009At the end of November, 2001, US Special Forces, CIA operatives and US Army troops, backed by British commandos and working with Dostum’s militia, carried out a horrific three-day bombardment and mass execution of foreign Taliban POWs at Dostum’s Qala-i-Janghi prison fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif. In fact, the Taliban from Kunduz who died in metal containers were originally slated to be shipped to Qala-i-Janghi, but were diverted because of the US-led slaughter that was then underway at the fortress.
The exact number of defenseless POWs who were slaughtered at Qala-i-Janghi remains unknown, but most estimates place the toll in the many hundreds. Unlike the mass murder of Taliban in the desert near Shibarghan, the carnage at Qala-i-Janghi is well documented. News video at the time showed US jets and helicopter gunships dropping bombs on the prison compound, Northern Alliance troops firing from ridges into the prison yard, and dozens of corpses and body parts littering the grounds of the fortress.
Under US direction, Northern Alliance forces poured gasoline into basement hideouts where Taliban prisoners had sought refuge and ignited them, burning scores of people alive. They followed this by flooding the basements with freezing water. On December 1, after three days of mass murder, some 85 survivors surrendered. Most of these were subsequently shipped to the US prison camp at Guantanamo.
Dead POWs were found after the attack with bullets to their heads and their hands tied behind their backs, making clear that they had been executed. A documentary film entitled House of War: The Uprising at Mazar-i-Sharif, containing footage shot during the rampage by international journalists, was aired by CNN on August 3, 2002.
The attack began when POWs, provoked by CIA agents who were interrogating them, killed their main tormentor, CIA operative Johnny “Mike” Spann, and his partner fled and called for US air strikes to put down what he called a prisoner revolt.
Top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for this war crime, which recalls the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and atrocities carried out by Nazi forces in Europe during World War II. In the days leading up to Qala-i-Janghi, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld vetoed an offer from Northern Alliance commanders besieging Kunduz to allow Afghan Taliban to return to their homes and foreign Taliban to be placed under United Nations jurisdiction in return for their surrender.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/nyag-j13.shtml