Jamie Doran, writing in Le Monde Diplomatique, in 2002.

The sense of urgency was not lost on Amir Jhan, who raced between the opposing sides in an attempt to halt the inevitable. Finally, on November 21, they reached a settlement: the entire Taliban force would surrender to the Northern Alliance in return for a pledge that their lives would be spared. Around 470 men (including many suspected al-Qaida) were taken to Kalai Janghi where they were incarcerated in tunnels below one of its giant compounds.

On 25 November two CIA operatives arrived to interrogate individuals. During this time, there was a breakout as the vanquished Taliban overpowered several guards, seized their weapons and began shooting. Within minutes, the CIA’s Johnny "Mike" Spann was dead, along with 30 Northern Alliance soldiers.

A fire-fight began, magnifying when the Taliban captured the fort’s armoury, stupidly situated inside the compound in which they were imprisoned. US Special Forces on the ground called in air strikes, while the British SAS led counter-attacks. By the third day of fighting, there was not a single Taliban alive above ground at the fort, which is very unusual in a military operation - one always expects to find a few living combatants, albeit badly wounded.

The Western media, present in hundreds at the Kunduz surrender, moved en masse to Kalai Janghi where they filed exciting reports from the relative safety of the adjacent compound and even further away. Kalai Janghi became the centre of focus on the Afghan war, and the discovery some days later of the American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, and 85 others who had survived in the tunnels below the fort strengthened its central position. Incredibly, no one was concerned to ask at the time what happened to the others who surrendered at Kunduz.

The fate of those thousands of young men has led to calls for independent, international inquiries after we previewed our film at the European parliament in Strasbourg. Their fate darkly stains the hands of Northern Alliance soldiers, the Western media, the UN, the US government and its military personnel.

What happened to them involves another fort, previously unmentioned by the media, where murder began and led to the death of up to 3,000 prisoners. Amir Jhan, who helped negotiate the surrender, said: "I counted them one by one; there were 8,000. Now there are only 3,015 left. And among these 3,015 are local Pashtun people from Kunduz, Shiberghan, Balkh and Mazar, who were not even among the original prisoners I handed over. Where are the rest?" The answer lies partly in that 50-metre mound of sand in the desert at Dasht Leili.

Over 5,000 are missing. A few may have escaped; others may have bought their freedom while more may have been sold to the security agencies of their countries, to return to a terrible fate. But according to a number of eyewitnesses found during a six-month investigation, most lie in the sand. None of our witnesses received payment and all put themselves in great danger because they took part in our film.

The story begins at the fort of Kalai Zeini, which is on the road from Mazar to Shiberghan. This fort, enormous even by Afghan standards, was used as a holding point for the thousands captured at Kunduz. The official objective was to transfer them to Shiberghan prison where they could be held before interrogation by American experts. Those singled out would then be transferred to the base at Guantanamo in Cuba.
Containers of death

At Kalai Zeini they were forced to sit, side by side, across a vast field within the perimeters. Soon a convoy of trucks arrived with metal cargo containers fastened to their chassis. The prisoners were then ordered to line up before being squeezed into these containers. A Northern Alliance officer, who agreed to speak anonymously, said: "We were responsible for delivering the prisoners and we loaded 25 containers from Zeini to Shiberghan. We put around 200 people into each container."

Compressed into these airless, dark metal boxes in very high temperatures, the Taliban cried for mercy. Another Afghan soldier who lent credence to his testimony by admitting he killed some prisoners, said: "I hit the containers with bullets to make holes for ventilation and some of them were killed." I asked him if he personally shot holes into the containers, and why, and who gave the orders, and he said: "The commanders ordered us."

But his honesty conceals enormous cruelty. We found many of the bullet holes in the containers were in the bottom and middle, rather than at the top. If they had really been intended for ventilation, then bullets fired into the top of the containers would have given the prisoners a better chance of survival.

A taxi driver we met had called in at one of the makeshift gas stations that litter the main roads: "At the time they took prisoners from Kalai Zeini to Shiberghan, I went to fill my car with petrol. I smelt something strange and asked the attendant where it was coming from. He said ’Look behind you’. There were three trucks with containers on them. Blood was pouring from the containers. It was horrible. I wanted to move but couldn’t because one of the trucks had broken down and they had to tow it away, blocking my path."

The following day he stood outside his home in Shiberghan and another horrific sight caught his eye: "I saw another three trucks loaded with containers drive past my house. Blood was pouring from them." Some of the misery within the sealed containers had not been relieved by the at least fast death from bullets. The prisoners were left for four or five days to die of suffocation, hunger and thirst. When the containers were finally opened, a mess of urine, blood, faeces, vomit and rotting flesh was all that remained. The immediate question anyone who has seen Shiberghan prison asks is how such an institution, capable of holding no more than 500 prisoners, could realistically have been expected to cater for 15 times that number? Was it coincidence that many destined for there never arrived?

As the containers were lined up outside the prison, a soldier accompanying the convoy was present when the prison commanders received orders to dispose of the evidence quickly: "Most of the containers had bullet holes. In each container maybe 150-160 had been killed. Some were still breathing, but most were dead. The Americans told the Shiberghan people to get them outside the city before they were filmed by satellite." This accusation about US involvement will be crucial to any inquiry: international, and national, civil and military law relies on establishing the chain of command under which crimes took place. It is a matter of determining who was running the show at Shiberghan.

We found two drivers from different regions who, on separate days, led us to the same spot in the desert. They were both visibly distressed. Their accounts of the journey from Kalai Zeini through Shiberghan to Dasht Leili are harrowing.

Driver number one said: "There were about 25 containers. The conditions were very bad because the prisoners couldn’t breathe, so they shot into the containers. Many of the prisoners lost their lives. At Shiberghan, they offloaded the prisoners who were obviously alive. But there were some injured Taliban and others who were so weak they were unconscious. We brought them to this place, which is called Dasht Leili, and they were shot. I came here three times and each time I brought about 150 prisoners. They shouted and cried when they were shot. There were about 10 or 15 other drivers who made the same journey."

Driver number two said: "They commandeered my truck from Mazar without paying any money. They took my truck and loaded a container on to it and I carried prisoners from Kalai Zeini to Shiberghan and, after that, to Dasht Leili where they were shot by the soldiers. Some of them were alive, injured or unconscious. They brought them here, bound their hands and shot them. I made four trips backwards and forwards with prisoners. I brought 550-600 people here."

Despite many sightings by local villagers, drivers and Northern Alliance soldiers, the Pentagon continues to deny that American soldiers were present at the time in Shiberghan or Dasht Leili. "They weren’t in the vicinity at all," according to Colonel David Lapan of Central Command. He said they had carried out an internal investigation and were satisfied that no US soldiers had been present or witnessed atrocities. All calls for a formal inquiry have been rejected.

Driver number one said: "There were Jumbish [Uzbek] people and American soldiers at Shiberghan jail. I didn’t see any [Americans] here, but I saw them at the prison and they may have been in the trucks."

Driver number two, asked about the presence of US soldiers, said: "Yes, they were with us." At Dasht Leili? "Yes, here." How many? "Lots of them: maybe 30-40. They came the first two times with us but I didn’t see them on the next two trips." Months later the bulldozer tracks were still visible on the final stages of the trail to Dasht Leili: the bodies were pushed into a hollow and then hidden under tons of sand.

Even for those who survived the journey from Kalai Zeini to Shiberghan prison, their fate at the hands of American soldiers was hardly more merciful than death in the desert, according to eyewitnesses. One soldier recounted an incident when a US soldier murdered a Taliban prisoner in order to frighten the others into talking: "When I was a soldier at Shiberghan, I saw an American soldier breaking a prisoner’s neck. Another time, they poured acid or something on them. The Americans did whatever they wanted; we had no power to stop them. Everything was under the control of the American commander."

A general in the Northern Alliance, also stationed at Shiberghan at the time, claimed: "I was a witness. I saw them [US soldiers] stab their legs, cut their tongues, cut their hair and cut their beards. Sometimes it looked as if they were doing it for pleasure. They would take a prisoner outside, beat him up and return him to the jail. But sometimes they were never returned and they disappeared, the prisoner disappeared."

All of the witnesses in our film have agreed to attend any international inquiry or court case that may result from their statements. If given the opportunity, they would be willing to identify the US personnel. While the accusations of torture and murder in Shiberghan prison may be difficult to substantiate so long after the event, a mass grave containing the bodies of thousands of prisoners does lie just four kilometres from that jail. If US servicemen were involved in disposing of these prisoners, if they headed the chain of command as alleged by many witnesses, and stood by as hundreds were summarily executed, then they are guilty of war crimes.

While the US Congress rushes through laws to prevent any American soldier from facing prosecution abroad, the senators and representatives might wish to consider the words of Andrew McEntee, a leading human rights lawyer and former chairman of Amnesty International, who has read the full transcripts of our witness statements and viewed hours of filmed evidence. "I believe it is quite clear from the evidence presented that an independent inquiry is essential. These are not simply crimes against international law, they are offences under the laws of European countries, attracting universal jurisdiction. And they are also offences under US law."

If the US wishes to continue and even expand its role as the world’s policeman, standing firm against terror, it must be seen to be applying the rule of law and not of the gun. The 1968 massacre in the Vietnamese village of My Lai, and the US army court martial of Lieutenant William Calley, seem a long time ago, and the world may have changed since, but the basic tenets of law and justice remain the same. And the innocent have nothing to fear from the truth.