AFGHANISTAN: Communist era mass grave discovered hightlights need for post-war justice

KABUL, 22 December (IRIN) - Some 2,000 bodies are believed to have been dumped in a recently unearthed communist-era mass grave in Afghanistan's capital Kabul, officials said on Thursday. -- The mass grave was unearthed one day earlier close to the communist era's most notorious prison Poli Charkhi on the eastern outskirts of the capital by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said Dr Mohammad Halim Tanwir, director of the international press centre at the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture (MIC). MIC officials believe that the massacre took place between 1978 and 1986 when the Moscow-backed communist presidents, Noor Mohammad Tarakai, Hafizullah Amin and Babrak Karmal were in power. -- Human skulls with bullet wounds, broken bones, pieces of clothing and shoes were seen in the several metre-long grave. -- "More than 50,000 of our innocent people - who were mainly jailed in Poli Charkhi prison, were executed at that time," Tanwir asserted. " -- The recovered bodies show that many of them had been shot in the head and then buried." ---- In January this year, a former Afghan intelligence chief, Assadullah Sarwary was sentenced to death for his alleged involvement in mass killings during the rule of Noor Mohammad Tarakai. ---- To date several mass graves belonging to the communist era [1978-1992], the period of factional fighting between Mujahideen [1992-1996] and the Taliban [1996-2001] have been discovered in Afghanistan.