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OIC Urges U.N. Probe Into Afghan Deaths
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| Al Qaeda and Taleban prisoners |
KABUL, Jan. 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The world's largest Muslim body, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said Tuesday it had asked the United Nations to probe the deaths of hundreds of foreign prisoners in Afghanistan.
The OIC said in a statement that its secretary-general, Abdelouahed Belkaziz, had demanded a probe into the “massacre of prisoners of war who had surrendered to Northern Alliance forces, following assurances that they will be well treated and handed over to the U.N.”
U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, in a written reply to the request, stated that such an investigation would only be possible after the formation of an Afghan human rights commission, which the U.N. would help set up, the statement said.
“But even after it is established, such a commission would not be able to work effectively to investigate such a highly complex incident except after some time,” said the OIC statement sent to news agencies from the organization's headquarters in Saudi Arabia.
The Northern Alliance has said that 600 prisoners, including Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens, and more than 40 of its fighters were killed in three days of fighting which erupted after the inmates staged a revolt in a fortress in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif in November.
Television footage showed dead Al-Qaeda fighters sprawled in trenches and littering the courtyards of the Qala-i-Jangi fortress, where they were held.
British television has shown video footage of Westerners, believed to be British and U.S. troops, firing machine guns and rifles alongside Afghan alliance fighters at the prisoners.
Human rights organizations and the U.N. human rights chief, Mary Robinson, have called for an international inquiry into the death of the prisoners and expressed concern about other reported massacres in Afghanistan.
Robinson has said an investigation could be led by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and her staff in Afghanistan was already “mapping out patterns of massacres.''
She has also expressed concern about the “substantial toll of deaths and injuries” among Afghan civilians caused by U.S. bombing, and the destruction of hospitals and old people's homes.
Meanwhile, the United States has demanded the handover of top Taliban leaders who were released after surrendering to Afghan authorities, as it interrogates two suspected Al-Qaeda fighters captured in a raid on a cave complex.
The Taleban officials, including three former ministers and five other senior figures, were released under a general amnesty after they turned themselves in to authorities in Kandahar province, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Provincial spokesman, Khaled Pashtun, said Tuesday the members of the defeated regime had surrendered over the past month since their stronghold in Kandahar city fell to opposition forces.
However, General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said information from the Taleban leaders could help in the search for Mullah Mohammad Omar and Osama bin Laden.
"Obviously, individuals of that stature in the Taleban leadership are of great interest to the United States, and we would expect that they would be turned over, absolutely," he said.
"I can say that from the beginning what we want out of this is the Al-Qaeda leadership and the Taleban leadership and, of course, that would include Bin Laden and that would include Omar," he said.
Myers claimed U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan seeking to wipe out the last of the Taleban, and the Al-Qaeda network, had captured a group of 14 Al-Qaeda fighters and detained two of them for interrogation.
They were captured late Monday as U.S. forces swept an area around a former Al-Qaeda base in Paktia province, revealing a huge network of caves and underground bunkers, he said in Washington.
Myers alleged U.S. forces were now holding 364 Al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects in Afghanistan and on a U.S. ship off the Gulf of Oman, some of whom would be transferred "soon" to a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba.
The multinational peacekeeping force for Afghanistan is steadily building up to its expected full force of 4,500 by the end of the month, AFP reported.
The interior ministry said Afghan military units in Kabul have been ordered to withdraw to their barracks outside the capital within three days to allow Afghan police and foreign peacekeepers to patrol the city.
"(Interior Minister Yunis) Qanooni has decided that all these military units affiliated to the defense ministry that took part in the conquest of Kabul should evacuate the city within three days," said Din Mohammad Jorat, chief of the law and order department at the ministry.
“After that the peacekeeping force along with our police force will be patrolling the city," he said.
Under an agreement signed between ISAF and the Afghan interim administration, the force is confined to Kabul and its environs and its powers are strictly limited.
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