Wikileaks publishes US war crimes in Afghanistan
July 26, 2010 07:22 am
A whistleblower website wikileaks has published what it says are more than 90,000 of secret American military files about the war in Afghanistan which include details of 144 incidents in which Coalition forces have killed civilians.
The White House has attacked online whistleblowing site
Wikileaks after it published some 200,000 pages of secret American military
files about the war in
The files, published online by The Guardian, the New York Times and
The Guardian says the leaks show that troops killed hundreds of civilians in previously unreported incidents.
In one example cited by the British paper, French troops fired at a bus full of children, injuring eight.
A
According to the New York Times they also “suggest that
Describing the talks as “secret strategy sessions,” the newspaper said they “organise
networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in
The Guardian says the files revealed a secret black-ops unit which hunts down Taliban leaders for “kill or capture” without trial; how the US covered up evidence of surface-to-air missiles acquired by the Taliban; and how the Taliban have caused growing carnage with their roadside bombing campaign, killing more than 2,000 civilians to date.
“The
“Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents - the
Much of the information is not new, but what has angered officials in
The New York Times said it, along with the Guardian and Der Spiegel, had received the leaked material several weeks ago from Wikileaks, a secretive web organisation headed by Australian Julian Assange.
The news organisations agreed to publish their reports, based on the files “used by desk officers in the Pentagon and troops in the field when they make operational plans,” on Sunday.
“Most of the reports are routine, even mundane, but many add insights, texture and context to a war that has been waged for nearly nine years,” the Times said in a note to readers describing the leaks.
“Overall these documents amount to a real-time history of the war reported from one important vantage point - that of the soldiers and officers actually doing the fighting and reconstruction.”
Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010
http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/
ABC