Salon.com has a bombshell story just out ("Did US Forces Watch Afghan Massacre?") that builds on the recent New York Times exposé of how the Bush administration repeatedly thwarted war crimes investigations of the mass grave at Dasht-e-Leili. As many as 2,000 prisoners of war, who had surrendered to American and allied Afghan troops in 2001, were, according to the Times, stuffed into metal containers on flatbed trucks where most died of asphyxiation en route to Sheberghan prison. The bodies were allegedly dumped in a mass grave a few kilometers from the prison, which was discovered by Cambridge, MA Physicians for Human Rights which has been agitating ever since for a thorough investigation.
In April 2002, Physicians for Human Rights forensic experts dug a test trench as part of a preliminary investigation for the UN at the Dasht-e-Leili mass grave site near Sheberghan, Afghanistan, and exposed 15 bodies. (Physicians for Human Rights)
Salon's Mark Benjamin summarizes -- and then reproduces a three-page witness statement, a redacted copy of which is posted by Salon:
Allegations of a massacre near Dasht-e-Leili, Afghanistan, by Taliban forces soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began to surface during U.S. law enforcement interviews with detainees at Guantánamo. Roughly 10 detainees described similar stories of the mass killing in late 2001 by asphyxiation in shipping containers. Some detainees also alleged that U.S. forces stood by but did nothing to stop the massacre, though the number and specificity of those claims remains unclear. The document reprinted below, heavily redacted, records an interview with one detainee who reported seeing a "big, tall, caucasian [sic] American." The Criminal Investigative Task Force, or "CITF," named below refers to an investigative task force drawing on such agencies as the FBI, CID and NCIS.
President Obama, in a break with his predecessor, told CNN that he has directed his national security team to collect the facts so he can decide how best to proceed.
"There are responsibilities that all nations have, even in war. And if it appears that our conduct in some way supported violations of the laws of war, then I think that we have to know about that."
Salon reports that an FBI team interviewing detainees at Guantánamo Bay took statements from roughly 10 survivors of the alleged November 2001 massacre. The prisoners had surrendered jointly to U.S. forces and to the Northern Alliance.
Witness statements taken by the FBI and made public for the first time today reportedly place U.S. personnel at the scene of an alleged massacre of Taliban prisoners. Nevertheless, the Bush Administration reportedly refused to pursue -- and even thwarted -- an FBI probe into possible war crimes.
Benjamin describes how Dell Spry, a former FBI Special Agent, led a team at Guantánamo Bay that compiled war crimes allegations made by the detainees:
But what the Times did not report was that many of those same detainees also alleged to Spry's interviewers that U.S. personnel were present during the massacre, a potentially explosive allegation that, if true, might further explain American resistance to a war crimes probe of the deaths. In an exclusive interview, Spry told Salon that he informed [Times reporter James] Risen about the additional allegation that U.S. forces were present. Risen confirmed to Salon that Spry told him of the allegations, but said he did not publish them, in part, because he didn't believe them.
U.S.-backed Northern Alliance troops under the command of General Abdul Rashid Dostum reportedly committed the massacre and buried the bodies in a mass grave in the desert of Dasht-e-Leili, near Sheberghan, Afghanistan.
The Times' front-page story on July 11 revealed that at the time of the massacre General Dostum was on the CIA payroll. The Times also published for the first time a photo of the alleged mass grave, taken by a forensic team operating under the auspices of the United Nations.
Former FBI Special Agent Dell Spry told Salon that according to statements from witnesses interviewed by the FBI at Guantánamo, U.S. personnel were present during the Dasht-e-Leili incident. Spry stated that based on this information, he requested a full investigation into possible war crimes, but the Bush Administration refused to pursue such a probe.
Although Spry himself, based on these witness reports, is skeptical that U.S. personnel were present, he believes it is very plausible that the massacre itself occurred. Therefore, Spry felt it was important to investigate to prove whether those serious allegations were true or not.
Benjamin writes:
The paper showed that Spry sent the information up his chain of command. A senior FBI official halted a subsequent investigation. The military also evinced little interest. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz apparently told another defense official at the time that the United States wasn't going to go after Dostum for the deaths, because he was a valuable asset.
What the Times did not say was that these Guantánamo prisoners also said that U.S. personnel were present during the massacre. "The allegation was that U.S. forces were present while Dostum's troops were herding these people into these containers," Spry, now retired from the FBI and working as an FBI consultant, told Salon. "They were out rounding up alleged Taliban and insurgent folks."
Spry said that at the time of the interviews not long after the invasion of Afghanistan he found the detainees' claims of a massacre "plausible," since the detainees separately told similar stories. Spry thought an investigation seemed warranted. He found the claims of the involvement of U.S. personnel, however, more specious, mostly because he doubted that Americans would participate in or stand by passively during a massacre. "I did not believe that then and I do not believe that now," he said about the alleged involvement of U.S. personnel.
The Times story dodged the question of the complicity of American troops, even as it pointed to the potentially criminal behavior of Bush administration officials in failing to investigate and/or explicitly covering up war crimes. These, too, can constitute war crimes.
This dark chapter in our history deserves a thorough airing and the establishment of a full and transparent record of what U.S. personnel on the scene saw or knew, and whether they reported it, and to whom, and what if any follow-up was done.
In light of Dell Spry's account, it also seems that FBI Director Robert Mueller has some explaining to do. Of course, if he were in charge of the investigation, he would only be explaining to himself.