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UN
is expecting more grave sites to be discovered over the coming
months
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KABUL,
Sept 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A United Nations team is to
travel to northern Afghanistan to hold talks with provincial leaders
over an investigation into allegations that some 1,000 Taliban
prisoners were suffocated to death, a UN spokesman said Sunday, news
agencies reported.
The
United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) team would
head north later this week to meet Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam
and the powerful Tajik commander Atta Mohammad after they issued a
statement pledging to cooperate into any investigation, Manoel de
Almeida e Silva told reporters here, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.
"UNAMA
is sending a team to the north to review their statement and learn
more of the extent to which they are willing to cooperate," he
said.
In
their statement issued late last week, Mohammad and Dostam said that
only around 200 Taliban prisoners had died, mainly as a result of the
wounds they suffered at Kunduz. They did admit that some had died of
suffocation.
The
UN has already offered to assist any investigation into the claims
that hundreds of Taliban prisoners died as they were being transferred
in containers to Dostam's stronghold of Shebarghan late last year
following their surrender after a lengthy siege at the town of Kunduz.
Newsweek
magazine recently cited an internal UN memorandum which quoted one
witness saying that 960 people had been killed and buried in the
desert of Dasht-e-Leili close to Shebarghan.
The
newly formed independent Afghan Human Rights Commission is expected to
eventually probe the claims.
Dostam
and Mohammad’s statement said the deaths were mainly as a result of
injuries sustained by the prisoners in the fighting at Kunduz and
emphasized that their deaths were not intentional.
"The
operation of sending prisoners to Shebarghan prison continued for four
days. In no case were any prisoners killed. In no case was there any
intention that they should die in containers," it said.
"It
was of our utmost interest and that of the international coalition to
interrogate the prisoners."
"Most
of (the deaths) were due to wounds suffered in the fighting but also
due to disease, suffocation, suicide and a general weakness after
weeks of intense fighting and bombardment."
But
the statement, which was also signed by the powerful Tajik commander
Atta Mohammad and local Hazara leader Sardar Mohammad Sahidi, said
that "we believe these numbers are totally inaccurate."
The
statement said that United Nations investigators and human rights
teams had been given full access to the site.
"We
have been open to the best of our ability about the numbers and
events.... Both the UN and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) have
never confirmed the numbers."
They
called for investigations into alleged massacres perpetrated in the
north by the Taliban before their downfall last November.
"The
refusal of the United States to acknowledge and investigate the
possibility that its military partner murdered hundreds or thousands
of prisoners is a terrible repudiation of its commitment to hold
perpetrators of war crimes accountable for their deeds," said
Leonard S. Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human
Rights, in a statement released Sunday, August 18.
U.S.
troops were aware of reports of container deaths, Newsweek said. But
the magazine found no evidence U.S. soldiers were involved or
witnessed the deaths.
"I
have read in news media about suspected mass graves, but I don't know
anything about asphyxiation containers, or validated mass graves. I
don't know if its true," U.S. Central Command spokesman Major
John Robinson told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
De
Almeida e Silva said the UN was expecting more grave sites to be
discovered over the coming months as a result of greater access after
23 years of conflict in Afghanistan.
"In
May when we had a preliminary investigation... one of the things we
were discussing with experts at the time was how to deal with new
requests and what capacity there would be to respond to that.
"There's
a lot of need for capacity building to respond to these demands."
The
spokesman said there was a need to acknowledge the limitations of
investigators at the moment, but he added that "if they raise
this matter, we will follow up on any of the issues that are
discussed."
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