Dasht-i-Leili Massacre - Subsequent Investigations

Subsequent Investigations

In 2002, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) carried out preliminary investigations of alleged mass gravesites at Mazar. A UN forensic team found fifteen recently deceased bodies in a six-yard trial trench dug at a 1-acre (4,000 m2) grave site and performed an autopsy on three of them, concluding that they had been the victims of homicide, the cause of death being consistent with suffocation, as described by the eyewitness reports featured in Doran's film. A major Newsweek article on the massacre appeared in August 2002, raising questions about America's responsibility for the war crimes committed by its allies. It quoted Aziz ur Rahman Razekh, director of the Afghan Organization of Human Rights, asserting "with confidence" that "more than a thousand people died in the containers."

The 2002 Newsweek article stated that "death by container" – locking prisoners in containers and leaving them to die in them – had been an established method of mass execution in Afghanistan for some years. As the containers were sealed, the prisoners began suffering from lack of air soon after being locked in them. According to witnesses in Doran's documentary, air holes were shot into the sides of some containers, killing several of those inside. Newsweek reported that drivers were punished for giving water to the prisoners, or punching holes into the containers. Survivors of the container transports, interviewed by Newsweek, recalled that after 24 hours the bound prisoners were so thirsty that they resorted to licking the sweat of each other's bodies. Some bit into the bodies of fellow prisoners. In the containers of these survivors, only 20 to 40 prisoners of an original 150 or more were still alive when the containers arrived at their destination.

Further investigation of the mass grave sites were impeded by Rashid Dostum's continuing military control over the area and due to intimidation. Physicians for Human Rights have claimed that the Bush administration consistently refused to respond to PHR's calls for investigation. According to a document PHR obtained through a suit brought under the Freedom of Information Act, the Bush administration itself estimated that the number of prisoners killed was "higher than the widely reported 1,000" and "may approach 2,000".

Ahmed Rashid wrote in 2008 that the prisoners were "stuffed in like Sardines, 250 or more per container, so that the prisoners' knees were against their chests". According to Rashid, only a handful survived in each of the thirty containers and UN officials reported that just 6 out of an original 220 survived in one of the containers. The dead were buried by bulldozers in pits in the desert. Rashid called the massacre "the most outrageous and brutal human rights violation of the entire war", which had occurred "despite the presence of US SOF in the region."