WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, claims that war crimes in Afghanistan have been uncovered
in the 90,000 secret military records made public on his whistleblowing WikiLeaks
website.
The military logs give detailed descriptions of Nato
forces’ operations from 2004 to 2009 and suggest that hundreds of
Afghan civilian have been killed.
Also apparently revealed in
the WiliLeaks documents is a covert special forces unit targeting
insurgent leaders to be killed or captured without trial.
Concerns that Pakistan is supporting the Taliban also appear in the papers.
WikiLeaks founder Assange
said on Monday that the files could contain details of “thousands” of
war crimes and suggested that governments should not be criticising him
but using his reports to prosecute soldiers.
According to The Guardian,
the WikiLeaks records log 144 incidents involving Afghan civilian
casualties, in which 195 non-combatants died and 174 were injured.
Shockingly,
the leaked files also showed how a group of US marines who killed 19
unarmed civilians and wounded a further 50 after coming under attack
near Jalalabad in 2007 recorded fake reports about the incident.
WikiLeaks
boss Julian Assange said he hoped the files would prevent further human
rights abuses. “It is up to a court to decide clearly whether something
is in the end a crime. That said, on the face of it, there does appear
to be evidence of war crimes in this material,” he told a press
conference.
UK and US officials have condemned the WikiLeaks
documents, claiming they put the lives of coalition soldiers at risk.
However, Assange hit back, saying:
“We are familiar with groups
whose abuse we expose attempting to criticise the messenger to distract
from the power of the message.
“All the material is over seven
months old so is of no current operational consequence, though it may
be of very significant investigative consequence.”
Have a look at WikiLeaks here.
Tags: WikiLeaks, War in Afghanistan, war crimes, US forces, Nato
forces, civilian deaths, civilian casualties, Julian Assange, Wikileaks
boss, Pakistan, whistleblower
