Secret services 'acting like death squads'
Western secret services in Afghanistan are acting like South American "death squads'', a United Nations human rights expert claims.
Prof Richard Alston of the UN's Human Rights Council, said the intelligence agencies and Afghan militias were targeting suspected insurgency leaders with "impunity''.
Their missions, he said, were "unaccountable to any international military authority''.
Although he refused to identify which intelligence services he was talking about, his comments follow criticism of the activities of CIA units, often by military personnel from other nations operating in Afghanistan. It is alleged ultra-secret operations are frequently run outside the normal chains of Nato and US military command by CIA units that answer directly to the Pentagon.
"It is unacceptable for heavily armed internationals accompanied by heavily armed Afghan forces to be wandering around conducting dangerous raids that too often result in killings without anyone taking responsibility for them,'' Prof Alston said.
Among specific cases he investigated was a raid in Kandahar in January 2008 in which two brothers were killed. (© Daily Telegraph, London)
- Tom Coghlan in Kabul
