» 07/19/2011 10:25 PAKISTAN Shocking video: the Taliban execute 16 Pakistani policemen The Taliban released a video showing the execution by shooting of 16 policemen, probably captured last month near the border with Afghanistan. Even the Pakistani army has been accused of summary executions by human rights groups, but rejects the accusations.
Islamabad (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Taliban released a video showing the execution of a group of police officers in Pakistan. Pakistani police said that the video seems authentic.
The video shows 16 officers lined up, hands tied behind their back on a hill in northwest Pakistan. In the film, the Taliban, armed with machine guns, accuse the prisoners of betraying Islam and killing six children and then open fire on them with automatic weapons, killing them all. The men fall to the ground, riddled with bullets. Soon after the Taliban fire a single shot in the head of each victim.
In all probability the video was shot last month, when the Taliban crossed the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan and took control in the upper Dir, near the border with Afghanistan. The bodies of 16 police officers were discovered by residents in the area, which is often the scene of raids by Afghan Taliban.
The accusation against those condemned to death, of killing six children, probably refers to a video, released last year, which saw six youths who were suspected Taliban conducted to a forest and killed by soldiers. The Pakistani military says that the video is fake. The human rights groups say that there is sufficient evidence to affirm that the Pakistani army has carried out summary executions of suspected Taliban. The army denies the charge. "They are terrorists without mercy, and that's the challenge we face. We have suffered greatly at the hands of Al Qaeda and its affiliates, "said gen. Athar Abbas, spokesman for the Pakistani army.
In all these years, many analysts have suspected that there is an alliance between the army and the Taliban fringes.
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