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Pakistan to investigate video of executions it first dismissed as fake

09 October 2010 01:47 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The video circulating on the Internet shows the firing squad execution of six blindfolded men by what appear to be Pakistani soldiers, APA reports quoting â€œLos Angeles Timesâ€.
The army says a board of inquiry will now investigate.
Pakistan’s army chief Friday ordered an investigation into a video circulating through the Internet showing the brutal firing squad execution of six blindfolded Pakistanis by a group of men dressed in what appear to be Pakistani army uniforms.

Pakistani army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s call for the probe reverses the army’s initial reaction when the video first surfaced last month. At that time, military authorities called the video fake and denied that any Pakistani soldier could be involved in extrajudicial killings.

The five-minute, 39-second video shows the six men, blindfolded with their hands bound behind their backs, being led through a thicket of trees to an open patch near a wall, where they are lined up shoulder-to-shoulder by men in military fatigues and armed with automatic rifles. After one of the uniformed men who appears to be the commander says to the soldiers, "OK," the soldiers fire a volley of shots into the blindfolded men.

As some of the bound men wail in pain, one of the soldiers walks up, stands over the figures on the ground, and fires several more rounds into their bodies.

It is not known where on the Internet the video was first posted. Human rights activists say they believe it was taken in northwest Pakistan’s restive Swat Valley with a cellphone by one of the soldiers, though it is not known when.

A press release issued by the Pakistani army stated that Kayani has formed a "board of inquiry to establish the true identity of uniformed personnel and the veracity of the video footage." The board will be made up of a Pakistani major general and two or three senior officers who have experience investigating similar allegations.

According to the release, Kayani expressed "his determination to take strictest possible disciplinary action against the perpetrators, if identified to be soldiers of the Pakistani army." Kayani also warned against reaching hasty conclusions about involvement of Pakistani army soldiers," noting that in the past militants have disguised themselves as soldiers "to malign the Pakistani army" and to carry out terror attacks.

Allegations of extrajudicial killings carried out by Pakistani soldiers have dogged the military for more than a year. In a report released in April, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan alleged that 249 suspected summary executions had been carried out by Pakistani security forces between July 30, 2009, and March 22, mostly in the Swat Valley.

Last summer, the Pakistani army launched a major offensive that routed from the Swat Valley Taliban commanders and militants who had taken over the region as well as a district called Buner, just 60 miles from the capital, Islamabad. In the past, the Pakistani army has flatly denied allegations that its soldiers committed human rights violations during and after the Swat offensive. If it investigated any of those allegations, it kept those probes and the findings secret.

"I think this was a very prudent and wise decision," said Islamabad-based security analyst Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general. "We are fighting a counterinsurgency in which it’s very important to have the full support of the Pakistani peopleâ€¦.The point is to come clean and take action."

Masood said the uniforms and the G-3 rifles used by the men who carried out the executions appeared to be standard issue for Pakistani soldiers. Mehdi Hasan, chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said he believed the video was genuine. "They were in uniform, and they had rifles which Pakistani soldiers use. I don’t think it was fake."

After the video surfaced, Kayani and the military came under heavy pressure from the U.S. to investigate. "We take all allegations of human rights violations seriously," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said late last month. "Human rights and the issue of extrajudicial killings has been a part of our ongoing conversation with Pakistan."

Pakistan’s decision to investigate the video may also have been motivated by the prospect of having billions of dollars in aid that it receives from the U.S. jeopardized by a failure to take up the issue. U.S. law bars the delivery of aid to any foreign military that has committed gross human rights abuses.

"The U.S. has taken a serious view of this incident, and because of that, Pakistan will have to investigate this openly," Hasan said. "I believe that’s the reason why this investigation will be carried out seriously, because of the question of U.S. funding."

Before the army’s announcement of Kayani’s decision Friday, Pakistani television and print media had largely ignored the video â€” a reflection of the media’s trepidation over rankling the country’s powerful military establishment. In Swat, when military officers learned that a local photojournalist had the video on his cellphone, they ordered him to delete it and told other journalists to refrain from airing the video, according to a source who asked not to be named for fear of retribution.