MDMD "a great disorderly Tangle of Lines"

[Doug Millison]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,736307,00.html

New film accuses US of war crimes

Kate Connolly in Berlin and Rory McCarthy in Islamabad
Thursday June 13, 2002
The Guardian

A former chairman of Amnesty International yesterday called for an
independent investigation into claims that US troops tortured Taliban
prisoners and assisted in the disappearance of thousands of others in the
war in Afghanistan.

Andrew McEntee said that "very credible evidence" in a British documentary
film needed to be investigated. He was speaking after the first showing in
Berlin of the film, Massacre at Mazar.

"This film raises questions that will not go away," said Mr McEntee, who
led Amnesty International UK in the 1990s and is now an international human
rights lawyer.

The documentary describes how thousands of Taliban troops were rounded up
after the battle of Kunduz in late November and transported in sealed
shipping containers to Sheberghan prison, a jail then under US control in
northwestern Afghanistan.

The film alleges that large numbers of the prisoners died during the
journey. US troops suggested the drivers take the bodies out into the
desert at Dasht-i-Leili for burial. Two men said they were forced to drive
hundreds of Taliban, many of whom were still alive, into the desert, and
said that the living were shot. Footage showed large areas of compact red
sand dotted with the traces of bones, including jaw bones, and pieces of
clothing.

The filmmakers claim that thousands of Afghans, Pakistanis, Uzbeks,
Chechens and Tajiks may now be buried at the mass grave. UN and human
rights officials have found the grave but have not estimated the number it
contains. Only 15 bodies have been excavated.

A Pentagon spokesman last night denied the allegations: "US Central Command
looked into it a few months ago, when allegations first surfaced when there
were graves discovered in the area of Sherberghan prison. They looked into
it and did not substantiate any knowledge, presence or participation of US
service members."

The film's six witnesses have agreed to give evidence at any international
war crimes tribunal.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/dora-j17.shtml
 
Interview with Jamie Doran, director of Massacre at Mazar

http://www.webactive.com/webactive/cspin/cspin20011207.html
A massacre of Taliban prisoners at a Northern Alliance compound has human
rights groups and very few journalists demanding an investigation. But most
media outlets don't seem to be pursuing the killing of hundreds of soldiers
under the control of the US-backed Northern Alliance. Veteran human rights
journalists and executive editor of MediaChannel.org Danny Schechter will
join CounterSpin to talk about coverage of the prison massacre at
Mazar-i-Sharif.

http://germany.indymedia.org/2002/06/24331.shtml



"Never Reporters that anyone else was likely to believe,-- men who ate the
Flesh and fornicated with the Ghosts of their Dead, murders and Pirages on
the run, monks in parchment Coracles stitched together from copied Pages of
the Book of Johnah, fishermen too many Nights out of Port any Runagate
craz'd enough to sail West." (M&D 487)

"that there may continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk,
each day, losing our forbears in forever,-- not a Chain of single Links,
for one broken Link could lose us All,-- rather, a great disorderly Tangle
of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick
Deep, with only their Destination in common." (M&D 349)