Dasht-i-Leili massacre

The Dasht-i-Leili massacre occurred in December 2001 during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan when, depending on the sources, between several hundred to several thousand Taliban prisoners were shot and/or suffocated to death in metal shipping containers while being transferred by Junbish-i Milli soldiers under the supervision of forces loyal to General Rashid Dostum from Kunduz to Sheberghan prison in Afghanistan. The site of the graves is believed to be in the Dasht-e Leili desert just west of Sheberghan, in the Jowzjan Province.

Some of the prisoners were survivors of the Battle of Qala-i-Jangi in Mazar-i-Sharif. In 2009 Dostum denied the accusations. According to all sources, many of the prisoners died from suffocation inside the containers, and some witnesses claimed that those who survived were shot. The dead were buried in a mass grave under the authority of Commander Kamal. Those who participated in the burial included Commander Taher Charkhi, who voices no regret for their deaths. "Thousands should have died, not hundreds," he has said. Some witnesses later alleged that U.S. troops were present.

The allegations have been investigated since 2002 by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). PHR conducted two forensic missions to the site under the auspices of the United Nations in 2002.

In 2008, PHR, working with the UN, documented that the grave had been tampered with.

In late 2001, around 8,000 Taliban fighters, including Chechens, and Uzbeks as well as suspected members of al-Qaeda, surrendered to the Junbish-i Milli faction of Northern Alliance General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a U.S. ally in the war in Afghanistan, after the siege of Kunduz. Several hundred of the prisoners, among them American John Walker Lindh, came to be held in Qala-i-Jangi, a fort near Mazar-i-Sharif, where they staged a bloody uprising which took several days to quell. The remaining 7,500 were loaded onto containers for transport to Sheberghan prison, a journey that in some cases took several days.Human rights advocates say hundreds or thousands of them went missing.

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Wikipedia