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New York Times. 11 December 2001. Witnesses Recount Taliban Dying While Held Captive. Excerpts. SHEBERGHAN -- Dozens of Taliban prisoners died after surrendering to Northern Alliance forces, asphyxiated in the shipping containers used to transport them to prison, witnesses say. The deaths occurred as the prisoners, many of them foreign fighters for the Taliban, were brought from the town of Kunduz to the prison here, a journey that took two or three days for some. Colonel General Jurabek, the Northern Alliance commander in charge of some 3,000 prisoners being held here, said Saturday that 43 prisoners had died in half a dozen containers on the way, either from injuries or asphyxiation. But the number of deaths may be much higher. Several Pakistani prisoners interviewed in the prison have said that dozens of people died in their containers during the journey here. Omar, a pale and slight youth, who clutched a blanket round his head and shoulders, said through the bars of his prison wing that all but seven people in his container had died from lack of air. He estimated that more than 100 had died. Another Pakistani said 13 had died in his container and that the survivors had taken turns to breathe through a hole in the metal wall. One prisoner, Ibrahim, a 30-year- old Pakistani mechanic interviewed in the presence of General Jurabek, said he thought some 35 people had died in his container en route from Kunduz. "No oxygen, no oxygen," he said urgently in English. The general corrected him and said only five or six had died. Faced with transporting thousands of potentially dangerous prisoners even while a prisoner uprising in the Qala Jangi fort near Mazar-i- Sharif was under way, the Northern Alliance packed many of the detained into the sealed shipping containers for the journey from Kunduz, the last Taliban stronghold in the north, to this town, the hometown of Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum. One witness, a local driver who declined to be interviewed but spoke to Afghan acquaintances, said he had seen soldiers unloading many dead bodies from a container by the road not far from here. After several days of barring journalists on security grounds, the authorities have now opened the prison gates to foreign visitors. On Saturday, they approached the bars at the end of the corridor to the courtyard to talk to their guards and to journalists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
