Light shed on a 30-year-old Afghan secret

KHOJA GHAR, Afghanistan: Ordered to bury 16 bodies in the dead of night in 1978, a wary young army officer did his best to remember the location, quietly counting the paces from the unmarked mass grave to the roadside.

The popular account of the massacre, which Naeem retold, was that the family was killed between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. on April 28, 1978. After a day of fierce fighting, an army captain named Emamuddin entered the palace with a unit of men to arrest Daoud. The president refused to go with him and fired a pistol at the men. The mutinous soldiers responded with a withering hail of gunfire.
Light shed on a 30-year-old Afghan secret