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CIA's 'Afghan death squads' criticised

Western secret services in Afghanistan are acting like South American "death squads", a United Nations human rights expert has claimed.

  • By Tom Coghlan, The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2008
  • Published: 23:39 May 16, 2008
  • Gulf News

Kabul: Western secret services in Afghanistan are acting like South American "death squads", a United Nations human rights expert has claimed.

Professor Richard Alston, of the United Nations Human Rights Council, said the intelligence agencies and Afghan militias were targeting suspected insurgency leaders.

Their missions, he said, were "unaccountable to any international military authority".

Although he refused to identify any agency, his comments follow criticism of the activities of CIA units, often by military personnel from other nations operating in Afghanistan.

It is alleged that ultra-secret operations are frequently run outside the normal chains of Nato and US military command by CIA units. Among specific cases he investigated for contraventions of international law, Alston cited one raid in Kandahar Province in January 2008 in which two brothers were killed and which led to local protest.

"The victims are widely acknowledged, even by well-informed government officials, to have had no connection to the Taliban," said Alston.

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