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Pentagon "Can't Control" Treatment of Afghan POW's, Britain Rejects Inquiry
WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Pentagon officials said Friday that the U.S. is not responsible for the treatment of foreign and Afghan Taliban prisoners by their Northern Alliance captors, according to newspapers.
Meanwhile, some human rights groups slammed Britain's decision to reject an inquiry into this week's massacre of Taliban prisoners.
"To say that we can control or dictate what the opposition groups might do is just an overstatement," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke was quoted in a
Washington Post article Friday as saying. "We can't."
Hundreds of prisoners have been seen loaded into trucks and crammed into makeshift detention buildings, and hundreds were killed after a prison riot broke out several days ago near the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, news agencies reported.
The Post article explained that although U.S. Special Forces and CIA officers are taking part in interrogations of prisoners, to extract information about al-Qaeda, the U.S. is saying that the prisoners' fates are in the hands of the numerous rebels groups that are holding them.
The captured Taliban or al-Qaeda members have not been called "prisoners of war" by Washington - a framing which would allow them certain rights and protections under the Geneva Conventions, the article added.
A senior defense official told the Post that the U.S. forces are not in possession of prisoners and are only dealing with them in terms of getting information from them.
When asked about the numbers of prisoners and the conditions or locations they were being held in, he told the
Post, "That's like asking me what conditions prisoners in France are being held in."
Further, he added, the United States' only interest in the prisoners is "what sort of information they have." The official also suggested that if prisoners were being tortured U.S. Special Forces would "presumably" report whatever they witnessed.
These are some ways, the article said, that Washington is remaining vague about the conditions and treatment of the Afghan prisoners in the face of caution and criticism from human rights groups. Some of these watchdogs draw on documented information about previous human rights abuses by the Northern Alliance to issue warnings about allowing them free reign.
On Friday, Amnesty International issued a statement expressing their "dismay" that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw ruled out an inquiry into the killings of Taliban prisoners during the revolt at the Qalai Janghi fort.
"The rejection of an inquiry by the United Kingdom into what is apparently the single most bloody incident of the war, during which serious abuses of international human rights and humanitarian law may have been committed, raises questions about their commitment to the rule of law," the statement said.
"It gives cause for concern regarding the fate of other current and future prisoners in Afghanistan. If abuses have been committed, denying an inquiry would give a green light to further abuses and perpetuate the culture of impunity already inflicted on Afghanistan."
Mary Robinson, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said many unanswered questions remained about the three days of fighting around the prison complex near Mazar-e-Sharif. The incident left between 150 to 600 Taliban prisoners dead, allegedly at the hands of Northern Alliance troops.
A spokesman for Robinson said the U.N. was particularly concerned that many of the dead appeared to have been killed, even though they were already tied up by Alliance forces.
European Parliament member Glenys Kinnock, wife of former Labor leader Neil Kinnock, joined calls by the London-based human rights watchdog for an inquiry Thursday.
However, Straw was adamant such a move was unnecessary and impossible.
"The idea that at this moment you can have a judicial inquiry in the difficult circumstances of Mazar-e-Sharif is frankly not on," said Straw, as quoted by BBC's online news service.
Amnesty International had urged the investigation into how the incident occurred and into "the proportionality of the [Alliance] response." But British Foreign Office minister, Peter Hain, dismissed their concerns, saying the battle was an "inevitable" result of Taliban prisoners trying to escape.
"These people were al-Qaeda fighters of the most extreme and militant kind, who got hold of weapons and tried to fight their way out," he told the British daily newspaper,
The Independent. "Inevitably, there was a reaction and an attempt to control that. We don't need an inquiry."
Two British Muslims were among the hundreds of Taliban fighters killed, according to information supplied Thursday by a Northern Alliance soldier.
They were named as Derby-born Abdul Latif Rahman, aged 26, and Yousef Nasir Khan, 23, originally from London. Details of the two men were discovered in documents found by the Northern Alliance among the debris of a training camp on the outskirts of Kabul.
In its statement Friday, Amnesty said that if the forces involved in the massacre incident were not willing to investigate what had happened, the world community should consider an international inquiry involving the United Nations.
"What can there be to fear from an inquiry except the truth and a clear message that impunity will not be tolerated?" the statement asked. "The history of Afghanistan is riddled with the abuse of human rights and there can be no sustainable peace in the country if impunity for past and current abuses is allowed."
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