Brad Norington, Washington correspondent | July 14
The US President's directive re-opens official US government interest in the circumstances behind a mass grave in northern Afghanistan that dates back to late 2001.
The murders were allegedly carried out at the behest of a local warlord backed by the US-led Northern Alliance.
According to the original reports of the incident just months after it happened, captured Taliban fighters were allegedly killed while being transported in cramped container trucks.
Last week the allegations re-emerged when it was reported that the Bush administration had "repeatedly discouraged" efforts to inquire into killings.
In an interview with CNN, Mr Obama said indications the deaths had not been properly investigated had only recently been brought to his attention.
"So what I've asked my national security team to do is to collect the facts for me that are known, and we'll probably make a decision in terms of how to approach it once we have all of the facts gathered up," he said.
His comments were aired yesterday after an interview pre-recorded in Ghana, the last leg of the President's trip to Russia and the G8 meeting in Italy.
Asked directly whether he would support an investigation, Mr Obama said: "I think that, you know, there are responsibilities that all nations have, even in war. And if it appears that our conduct in some way supported violations of laws of war, then I think that, you know, we have to know about that."
The Taliban fighters killed were reportedly in the custody of soldiers controlled by General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Afghan warlord who has switched sides over the years.
General Dostum, who was recently re-appointed as the military chief of staff to Afghan President Hamid Karzai after a period of exile in Turkey, was first named in a 2002 Newsweek article that cited a confidential UN memo about the murders.
It said the Taliban prisoners, who had surrendered to General Dostum's forces, were believed to have suffocated while being taken in cramped container trucks for the two-day journey from their northern Afghanistan stronghold in Konduz to Sheberghan prison, west of the General's headquarters at Mazar-e Sharif. There were also reports shots were fired into the containers by troops.
A Massachusetts-based group called Physicians for Human Rights raised the issue soon after it allegedly occurred, saying it had found a mass grave in nearby Dasht-e Leili where, according to witnesses, the bodies of Taliban prisoners were buried.
The human rights group's claims prompted US General Tommy Franks, then leader of the Afghanistan invasion, to back an inquiry. But little appears to have come of it, amid claims that neither the Defence Department nor the FBI followed through with full investigations.
The New York Times reported on Friday that the Bush administration "repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode" and that many other alleged executions of Taliban fighters by local warlords were overlooked.
Source: The Australian
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