7/17/02 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
LATELINE
Late night news & current affairs

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT
LOCATION: abc.net.au > Lateline > Archives
URL: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/s586222.htm

Broadcast: 19/6/2002
Mass grave discovered in Afghanistan
Human rights groups are urging that mass gravesites in northern Afghanistan be immediately secured and investigated for evidence of possible war crimes involving United States military personnel. An Irish documentary maker has secretly filmed mass graves near the northern city of Mazar-e-sharif and interviewed witnesses who claim that container loads of prisoners were dumped in the desert. It's alleged that most suffocated in the sealed containers, but those left alive were shot on the spot. Key aspects of his claims are backed up by a detailed report from the group Physicians for Human Rights.

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Compere: Tony Jones
Reporter: Jonathan Harley

TONY JONES: Human rights groups are urging that mass gravesites in northern Afghanistan be immediately secured and investigated for evidence of possible war crimes involving United States military personnel.

An Irish documentary maker has secretly filmed mass graves near the northern city of Mazar-e-sharif and interviewed witnesses who claim that container loads of prisoners were dumped in the desert.

It's alleged that most suffocated in the sealed containers, but those left alive were shot on the spot.

Key aspects of his claims are backed up by a detailed report from the group Physicians for Human Rights.

In a moment we'll speak to the documentary maker, and to the author of the report by Physicians for Human Rights.

But first, this report from Jonathan Harley.

JONATHAN HARLEY: This fort near the northern city of Mazar-e-sharif.

Staged for perhaps the most notorious known incident since the American-led campaign in Afghanistan began in October.

An uprising by defiant Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners was crushed under British and American guidance.

With the might of air strikes as many as 400 prisoners were killed in what's been widely described as a massacre.

At the time, the bloody battle inside the mud walls of the 19th century fortress was shrouded in confusion and secrecy.

But new material alleges that this horrific chapter was only part of a much larger and deadly story around Mazar-e-sharif, in which prisoners of war were murdered and buried en masse.

JOHN HEFFERNAN, PHYSICIANS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS: We then went out to the site and really did kind of a preliminary assessment and we were able to determine, yes, in fact there was a large area that had been recently bulldozed because the tracks were still there.

There were quite a bit of skeletal remains as well as clothing.

So we speculated that perhaps the people in this site, the bodies in this site, were the people who were unaccounted for in what is referred to as the surrender of Kunduz.

JONATHAN HARLEY: Surrounded and faced with only a fight to the death, at least 6,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters surrendered in the town of Kunduz in November.

Several were taken to the fort near Mazar-e-sharif, scene of the deadly uprising.

Around 3,000 were taken further west, to be held at a fort in Sheberghan.

But at least 2,000 prisoners who were supposed to be protected under the Geneva conventions appear to be unaccounted for.

EYEWITNESS: Many of the prisoners lost their lives on the journey and at Sheberghan they offloaded the prisoners who were still alive.

But some of the Taliban were injured and others were so weak they were unconscious.

We brought them to this place.

They took the injured who were still alive and shot them over there and also over there.

JONATHAN HARLEY: The Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights believe those men may be in mass graves about 10 kilometres outside of Sheberghan.

Citing eyewitnesses and having exhumed 15 bodies the human rights watchdog is urging an international inquiry and fencing off the area immediately.

JONATHON HEFFERNAN: With we need to protect that site and carry out a more no row investigation so the entire site can be examined.

What I said is that the numbers of people that are unaccounted for from the surrender of Kunduz, between 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, the numbers vary, but clearly quite a few people.

JONATHAN HARLEY: How they die asked the subject of a yet to be released documentary by Irish film-maker Jamie Doran.

His crew went secretly into the desert outside of Sheberghan where they were shown what appears to be a mass grave site.

Clothing and bodies are seen in shallow graves.

The site was identified by two local truck drivers.

The documentary alleges as many as 3,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners were buried outside Sheberghan under the gaze of American troops.

JOURNALIST: When you brought them here were any American soldiers around?

EYEWITNESS: Yes, there were.

JOURNALIST: Here?

EYEWITNESS: Yes. Here. Maybe 30 to 40.

JONATHAN HARLEY: Citing testimony by commercial drivers and Northern Alliance soldiers including at least one senior officer, the documentary alleges a range of atrocities.

Among them that Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners were crammed into cargo containers for their journey from Kunduz, that with up to 300 men per container, many suffocated, and that others were shot dead while in the containers, albeit as a gruesome attempt to give them some air.

NORTHERN ALLIANCE SOLDIER: My commanders ordered me to shoot the containers to make holes for ventilation.

Because of that some of the prisoners were killed.

JONATHAN HARLEY: And those prisoners who made it to Sheberghan fort may have been little better off.

The documentary alleges atrocities by American personnel as they interrogated prisoners.

EYEWITNESS: They cut their legs, I was a witness.

They cut their tongues and cut their hair and beards.

I was watching.

JONATHAN HARLEY: His testimony is yet to be verified.

For their safety, none of the witnesses, civilian or Northern Alliance, can be identified.

Mazar-e-sharif is under the notoriously ruthless command of Uzbek warlord, General Rashid Dostum.

Any investigation alleged atrocities and unmarked graves would inevitably question the conduct of men under his command.

It would also raise serious questions about the role of American personnel in the area.

The Pentagon says there's no evidence of any knowledge, presence or participation of US service members.

The strength of eyewitness accounts is yet to be tested, as is the nature of unmarked graves.

Human rights advocates say the only way to do that is by a full international inquiry and immediately before anyone gets rid of the evidence.

Jonathan Harley, Lateline.