President Obama’s comments follow initial statements from other officials in his administration Friday who said the Department of Defense and the FBI had no jurisdiction over the mass killing by a US-backed warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum. [1]

A Pentagon spokesman told the Associated Press, “There is no indication that US military forces were there, or involved, or had any knowledge of this, so there was not a full investigation conducted because there was no evidence that there was anything from a DoD perspective to investigate.

”The infamous Dasht-e-Leili massacre is back in the news in the wake of new evidence published in a New York Times report last Friday that shows the Bush administration blocked at least three federal investigations into the alleged war crimes.

The article by journalist James Risen notes that “American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation because the warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the CIA and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001.” [2]

Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death is a 2002 documentary by Irish documentary filmmaker and former BBC producer Jamie Doran about war crimes committed on Taliban fighters in November, 2001, after they had surrendered to Northern Alliance fighters after the siege of Kunduz.

[1] Dostum served as a defence official in the Karzai government. Last year he was suspended for threatening a rival at gunpoint and lived in Turkey in exile. But ahead of the August 20th elections, President Karzai has invited him back to the country and reinstated him as military chief of staff.

[2] Le criminel de guerre Rachid Dostum nommé à la tête de l’armée afghane by Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 4th April 2005.

According to the film, some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison. When the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the truck, killing many of them.

The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds.

Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried.

Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a mass grave. Outraged human rights groups and lawyers are calling for an investigation but the U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan refuses any U.N.-backed investigation until the Afghan government can protect witnesses. Two of the witnesses in the film have already been killed.

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Source: Democracy Now