Word: fortress
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...Taliban fighters, many of whom were foreigners, were transported from the field of surrender to a holding site in Qala-i-Jangi, a sprawling 19th century prison fortress to the west of Mazar, where Dostum stabled his horses. The convoy of prisoners had to pass through the city center; two weeks before, the Taliban had ruled the streets. The prisoners now peered out from under their blankets with shell-shocked, bloodshot eyes. The people of Mazar stared back at them with open hatred...
...Sunday Morning The next morning, two Americans went to meet the prisoners at Qala-i-Jangi. Their mission at the fortress: to identify any members of al-Qaeda among the prisoners. But the Americans didn't conduct the interviews one by one--another mistake. Instead, at 11:15 a.m., the pair--Johnny Micheal Spann, 32, one of the CIA agents who had been active in Afghanistan since the war's beginning, the other identified by colleagues only as "Dave"--were taken to an open area outside the cells and a group of prisoners brought to meet them. According to members...
...SUNDAY AFTERNOON At 2 p.m. two minivans and a pair of open-sided white Land Rovers mounted with machine guns pulled up outside the fortress gates. From the minivans jumped nine American special-operations men wearing wraparound sunglasses and baseball caps and carrying snub-nosed M-4 automatic rifles. The Land Rovers disgorged six British SAS soldiers armed with M-16s and dressed in jeans, sweaters, Afghan scarves and pakuls, the distinctive woolen hats of the Afghan mujahedin. The Americans and British quickly convened a conference with the Alliance leaders. "I want satcom [satellite communications] and JDAMS [guided munitions]," said...
...Dostum's intentions were unclear, his security arrangements proved catastrophic. Even before the revolt began, two senior Northern Alliance commanders were killed in the fortress on Saturday night by a hand grenade detonated by a Taliban prisoner. But the conflagration that killed most of the prisoners began on Sunday morning, triggered - according to an emerging consensus among news reports - when prisoners set upon two CIA operatives sent to interrogate them in the hope of weeding out Al Qaeda members. One of these men, Johnny "Mike" Spann, was reportedly beaten to death; the other escaped to a far corner...
...story of the week was the prison revolt at the Qalai Janghi fortress at Mazar-i-Sharif. Justin Huggler provided one of the most vivid and harrowing accounts of the bloodbath annotated with uncomfortable and unanswered questions in London's Independent. And in line with the growing British calls for an inquiry into the events, that paper's fiercely anti-war columnist Robert Fisk accuses the U.S. and Britain of complicity in a war crime. His argument is echoed in The Guardian where Isabel Hilton argues that the involvement of American and British personnel alongside General Dostum's men necessitates...