-Caveat Lector- http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/12/02/wkand10
2.xml&sSheet=/portal/2001/12/02/ixport.html WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Eighty Taliban prisoners in mass suicide By Damien McElroy (Filed: 02/12/2001) EIGHTY Taliban prisoners of war have apparently blown themselves up rather than surrender to the Northern Alliance. The troops, captured after the fall of the northern city of Kunduz, had been herded into a makeshift jail - a freight container - by soldiers loyal to the Afghan warlord Gen Rashid Dostum, whose fighters were involved in last week's slaughter of more than 600 prisoners of war in the uprising at the Qali-i-Jhangi fortress. Yesterday, 80 survivors of the massacre emerged from the basement of the ruined fortress. They had hidden without food for days in the hope of escaping the Northern Alliance. Gen Dostum was in the process of bringing two Taliban leaders from Kunduz - Mullah Faizal and Mullah Dadullah - to persuade the prisoners to accept their defeat, when the men apparently took a decision to commit suicide en masse by setting off at least one grenade. "There was a loud rumble from inside one of the containers," said Abdullah Ismail, one of Gen Dostum's commanders. "We opened it up to find that one or more of the Taliban had triggered an explosion inside. It was a mess. There were about 80 in there. There was stinking smoke and the walls were smeared with flesh." The incident in Sherberghan, near Mazar-i-Sharif, will raise new concerns over the treatment of prisoners by the Northern Alliance. Gen Dostum's troops are holding a further 6,000 former Taliban fighters. The suicides, which took place on Friday afternoon, have stalled efforts to get prisoners to hand over arms and ammunition. Northern Alliance guards have been ordered to stop body searches of the captured troops, mainly Uzbeks and Pakistanis. "We will not start to examine them until the Taliban mullahs address them," said Commander Ismail. Yesterday, Gen Dostum's lieutenants nervously patrolled the huge encampment of prisoners. There are fears of a revolt that might lead to an even greater slaughter than that at the Qali-i-Jhangi prison fortress. The three-day uprising there, apparently sparked by the belief that prisoners were to be executed, led to the death of a CIA officer and to US planes bombing the prisoners. Mindful of the fate of their colleague Johnny "Mike" Stunn, a CIA specialist in paramilitary activities, Americans waiting to question the prisoners at Sherberghan are keeping away, at least until the Northern Alliance confirm that they have been searched. Yesterday, at a guesthouse in the grounds of a grand villa a few miles away, six American special operations personnel were waiting for word that they can begin interrogations. The six, who would not give their names but were happy to show photos of their children back home, were given a tour of the compound on Thursday evening by Gen Dostum, a man whose easy-going manner belies his reputation as having the bloodiest hands in Afghanistan. When Gen Dostum controlled Mazar in the mid-1990s, he disliked visiting the city and instead spent his time at his walled-in villa in Sherberghan, with its crystal chandeliers and swimming pool, receiving envoys such as Bill Richardson, the former US ambassador to the United Nations. A visitor last week said that the compound now resembled a vandalised version of a Miami drug dealer's mansion. The Taliban had even chipped the heads of animals in the mosaics that cover the walls in its grandest rooms. During his heyday, a 2,000-strong militia was based at the nearby fort on the outskirts of the dusty city to protect their leader and enforce his commands across the region disparagingly nicknamed Dostumia, seized by the general after he turned on former comrades in the pro-communist regime of President Najibullah. The Dostum army last week returned to Sherberghan to corral the prisoners from Kunduz. After the fall of the last Taliban stronghold in the north, the regime's fighters were packed into steel shipping containers and put on open lorries. The lorries were interspersed with the general's personal Washington-procured cavalry: armoured personnel carriers and 4x4 off-roaders with satellite telephone links. Gen Atta Mohammed, a Tajik whose forces entered Mazar with Gen Dostum, told The Sunday Telegraph last week that foreign prisoners would be handed over to the United Nations. He said: "We have taken all the prisoners to Sherberghan where they will be quite safe. We have decided to forgive some of them, especially the Afghans. The decision over what to do with the foreign ones we will leave with the UN." *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! Write to same address to be off lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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