Alliance soldier describes executing five Taliban prisoners to avenge relatives' deaths

By STEVEN GUTKIN
Associated Press Writer

BAGRAM, Afghanistan – A northern alliance fighter on Friday described executing five Taliban prisoners as revenge for the slayings of his father and brother at Taliban hands.

During the anti-Taliban forces' sweep across northern Afghanistan and their seizure of the capital, Kabul, there have been scattered reports of atrocities by vengeful troops.

On Friday, a U.N. human right expert said reports of mass executions by warring factions in Afghanistan must be properly investigated and the perpetrators brought to justice.

"There is now an urgent need to ensure that these crimes are promptly and independently investigated," said Asma Jahangir, specialist on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions for the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission.

"There can be no impunity for these widespread and systematic killings, which may amount to crimes against humanity," she said in a statement issued in Geneva.

Firsthand accounts like that provided by a 19-year-old fighter named Abdul Raqib are unusual.

Interviewed on the former front lines north of Kabul, Raqib described an encounter Monday in a Kabul neighborhood called Qalai Fatula between northern alliance fighters and Taliban forces, which included about 100 Arabs and Pakistanis.

Twenty-two of the foreign fighters were killed, most of them in combat, but Raqib said he personally executed five of them after they were captured.

"I made them stand in a line, and then I fired," he told The Associated Press in an interview. "I was so angry."

Raqib said that two years ago, he was captured by the Taliban. After he escaped from prison, the Taliban killed his brother and father in reprisal, he said.

"I sought revenge because they killed my father and brother," he said, adding that he also wanted revenge for the death of northern alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massood.

After he gunned down the five, local women and children beat the dead bodies, he said in an interview in the village of Qalei Maleq, just outside opposition-held Bagram air base.

The United Nations has reported a number of revenge killings in the course of the advance by anti-Taliban forces.

Earlier this week, it said more than 100 Taliban fighters who attempted to take cover at a school in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif were killed by opposition fighters.

The Taliban retreated from the city Friday, touching off a rout by the northern alliance that was capped with its capture of Kabul on Tuesday.

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