On August 16, General Abdul Rashid Dostum — who is widely reported to be partly responsible for the massacre and for a subsequent cover-up — returned to Kabul to campaign for the re-election of President Hamid Karzai in the August 20 elections. It is widely reported that President Karzai has offered General Dostum a government post in exchange for his support.
“Real and lasting peace in Afghanistan will be made possible by strengthening the rule of law and ending the culture of impunity,” stated PHR CEO Frank Donaghue.
“Letting General Dostum return to any position of power before there is a thorough and transparent investigation into whether or to what extent he may have been involved in the alleged 2001 massacre, will be seen by the Afghan people as confirmation that warlords like Dostum have impunity for their crimes,” continued Donaghue. “General Dostum has admitted that these prisoners surrendered jointly to US special forces and to Northern Alliance troops under his command. As Physicians for Human Rights has said for 7 years since the organization’s experts discovered the alleged mass grave, the site must be secured, witnesses must be protected, and Afghanistan must join the international community in probing how these prisoners died and why General Dostum and the Bush administration reportedly impeded investigation into these alleged war crimes. PHR looks forward to appropriate action from President Obama after he receives a report from his national security team, whom he ordered to gather all the facts and report to him on whether the international laws of war were violated.”
“Not only is General Dostum alleged to have committed the original war crime; he is also reportedly responsible for serious tampering with evidence,” stated PHR Deputy Director Susannah Sirkin. “A Physicians for Human Rights forensic expert in 2008, working under the auspices of the UN, discovered that large pits have been dug in the area of Dasht-e-Leili where bodies are suspected to be buried. Analysis of satellite images performed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science at PHR’s request, shows the apparent presence of heavy earth-moving equipment at the site in August 2006. McClatchy Newspapers reported on December 11, 2008 that according to witnesses, General Dostum and his commanders “have taken all the bones and thrown them into the river.” And, according to US Government documents that PHR uncovered in 2006, witnesses to this incident were “tortured, killed, or simply disappeared.”
“Afghanistan must work with the international community to ensure appropriate protection of the site and any remaining physical evidence, as well as the safety of any witnesses,” said Donaghue. “These would be necessary steps toward fulfilling President Obama’s mandate to collect all available information about the alleged war crimes and the reported cover-up.”
In 2002, PHR investigators first confirmed the presence of human remains in a mass grave at Dasht-e-Leili, outside of the city of Sheberghan in Jowzjan Province, northern Afghanistan. Six and a half years later, in 2008, Stefan Schmitt, Director of PHR’s International Forensic Program, was in Afghanistan under contract with United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) to conduct forensic assessments on several different grave sites in the country. In an effort to re-visit sites which had been originally documented in 2002, Schmitt visited Dasht-e-Leili. In contrast to 2002, Schmitt, came upon two sizeable pits which had disturbed the area originally documented in 2002—indicative of apparent evidence tampering. Schmitt raised concerns about the state of the alleged massacre site in meetings with UN and Afghan officials in Kabul.
first spotted two large excavations on a visit in June, one of them about 100 feet long and more than 9 feet deep in places. A McClatchy reporter visited the site last month [November 2008] and found three additional smaller pits, which apparently had been dug since June.
In May 2009 PHR requested that the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) research and acquire available satellite imagery of the area to determine when two the sizeable pits possibly comprising the graves might have first appeared. Working with PHR’s International Forensic Program, the AAAS located and analyzed multiple images of the site acquired by the QuickBird, Ikonos, TopSat, and SPOT-5 satellites.
Satellite imagery analysis provided by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) revealed that apparent earth-moving equipment was present at the site on August 5, 2006. The image shows the presence of one large pit and apparent earth-moving equipment in a second area. A subsequent satellite image from October 24, 2007 reveals a second pit where the apparent earth-moving equipment had been.
It appears that within just a little over a month of PHR’s Freedom of Information Act request, two large pits were excavated in the general area where human remains are suspected to be buried. The contents (fill) of these pits was taken away to an unknown location, and considering the size of the pits, this must have taken many truck loads.
As PHR knows from our work in Bosnia, Rwanda, Central America and elsewhere, communities that have lost loved ones in mass killings—especially the mothers, siblings, and children of victims—have a right to the truth and to justice, including identification and return of remains. The demands of mothers and families demonstrating in the streets of Kabul over the last few days show that the Afghan people are demanding that those who have committed mass atrocities be held accountable. Peace and stability require truth and justice; it never pays to ignore mass graves and the atrocities associated with them.
Here is some brief footage from the recent protests in Kabul.
Posted on Monday, Dec 15, 2008 at 6:59 pm by Ben Greenberg
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Jonathan Hutson
jhutson [at] phrusa [dot] org
Tel: (617) 301-4210
Cell: (857) 919-5130
Cambridge, MA (PRWEB) December 15, 2008 — In response to the UN’s December 15 pledge to help Afghan authorities protect a mass grave site in northern Afghanistan that may contain evidence of war crimes, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) calls upon US Army General David McKiernan, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, to assist the UN in preserving any remaining evidence and protecting any surviving witnesses. PHR also calls on the US government to provide the Afghan Government, the UN and the US Congress a declassified analysis of satellite imagery of the site from November 2001 to the present.
“PHR is gratified that the UN is calling for the site to be protected, and that they have pledged to assist Afghan authorities in that crucial task,” said PHR CEO Frank Donaghue. “However, full protection of the grave will be dependent upon NATO forces being given the mandate to preserve any remaining evidence and safeguard any surviving witnesses.”
PHR further stated that:
NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan should provide the troops and logistics to enable this to happen right away. ISAF is currently under the command of Gen. McKiernan, who reports to CENTCOM Commander Gen. David Petraeus. The UN does not currently have security forces in Afghanistan; NATO troops already stationed in the area are the logical choice.
A full security cordon must be established around the area with round-the-clock guards, as was done with major alleged crime scenes of this type in Bosnia and Croatia during the Balkan wars. A full forensic investigation to assess and document the extent of damage to this site can occur only if the site has been secured for evidentiary as well as personal security reasons.
Afghanistan, with the UN and international community, must launch an investigation into the initial November 2001 incident as well as the likely destruction of evidence. Removal of evidence of an atrocity is in itself a crime, under the Geneva Conventions.
The Bush Administration needs to answer questions of who knew what and when, provide information on what they did or failed to do to secure the site, present detailed accounts of their internal investigations, and support accountability.
PHR requests that the US declassify satellite imagery over this particular site and the surrounding area from November 2001 to the present that would show both changes to the site in 2001 and the recent removal of massive amounts of soil from it and its disposition, and make the images available to the Afghan government, the UN, Congress, and other responsible parties.
“As PHR knows from our work in Bosnia, Rwanda, Central America and elsewhere, communities that have lost loved ones in mass killings—especially the mothers, siblings, and children of victims—have a right to the truth and to justice, including identification and return of remains,” said Donaghue. “The demands of mothers and families demonstrating in the streets of Kabul over the last few days show that the Afghan people are demanding that those who have committed mass atrocities be held accountable. Peace and stability require truth and justice; it never pays to ignore mass graves and the atrocities associated with them.”
KABUL, 15 December 2008 (IRIN) – Amid growing concerns about a reported excavation at a mass grave site in northern Afghanistan, a senior UN official has said the organisation is committed to help Afghan authorities preserve such sites in order to protect evidence of crimes committed over the past three decades of war in the country.
“The United Nations remains ready to assist all Afghan stakeholders, including victim groups, to take immediate and concerted action to preserve grave sites,” Norah Niland, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Kabul, told IRIN.
“At a minimum, victims have a right to the truth, and the preservation of evidence is a critical element in understanding and addressing the legacy of past atrocities,” said Niland, who also works as head of the human rights unit at the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
The UN announcement makes specific reference to the human remains removed from the Dasht-e-Leili mass grave site and to PHR’s call for an investigation.
The UN has confirmed that at least one grave site in the northern province of Sheberghan, where thousands of men allegedly associated with the Taliban were dumped in late 2001, has recently been disturbed.
It is unclear who took away human remains from the Dasht-e-Leili gravesite but many accuse Abdul Rashid Dostum, a powerful Uzbek warlord, because of his alleged involvement in the massacre of Taliban prisoners in 2001-2002. Dostum has denied the charges.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) – a Washington-based NGO investigating human rights violations – has called for an immediate investigation into the reported disturbance.
“Removing evidence of an alleged mass atrocity is itself a war crime and must be investigated… this destruction is a devastating blow to the effort to learn the truth of Dasht-e-Leili,” Frank Donaghue, chief executive officer of PHR, was quoted as saying in a press release on 12 December.
According to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), active efforts to block investigations of Dasht-e-Leili and other mass graves have been obstacles to a full accounting of the dead and to learning what has happened in these possible war crimes.
Little or no effort has been made so far to shed light on the identities of victims and those responsible for the crimes.
Zia Langari, a commissioner at the AIHRC, told IRIN: “Some powerful people block investigations into mass graves because they fear this would jeopardise their positions.”
Langari’s concern was echoed by Niland of UNAMA: “There are powerful elements that do not want investigations into mass graves.”
In November 2001, as many as 2,000 Taliban prisoners are believed to have been killed in container trucks by US-allied Afghan troops and buried in a mass grave in Dasht-e Leili, Afghanistan. These Afghan troops were operating jointly with American forces, who were allegedly present at the scene of the crime. PHR investigators discovered the mass grave in 2002. (More...)
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