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US documents detail 'war crimes' in Afghanistan, says Wikileaks

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, July 26, IRNA -- Wikileaks founder Julian Assange Monday described the publication of 90,000 US military records on the war in Afghanistan as “equivalent of opening the Stasi archives” in east Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Speaking at a press conference in London, Assange said the archive documents of the war between 2005 and 2009 contained details of “war crimes” but he declined to name a single incident when asked what the most significant revelation was in the leaked documents.

"The real story of this material is that it's war, it's one damn thing after another,” the 49-year old Australian internet activist and journalist said.

“"It is the continuous small events, the continuous deaths of children, insurgents, allied forces, the maimed people. Search for the word 'amputation' in this material, or 'amputee', and there are dozens and dozens of references," he said.

The US condemned as "irresponsible" the publication of the war archives on Wikileaks website, saying that they could threaten national security, but peace campaigners said the record confirm the truth and horrors about the “pointless and unwinnable war” in Afghanistan.

"The course of the war needs to change. The manner in which it needs to change is not yet clear," said Assange, who won the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award (New Media for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya.

He expressed scepticism that US President Barack Obama's exhortations to avoid civilian casualties would have an impact on the many tragic stories of deaths and killings previously unreported.

"The US army is an immense boat that is very difficult to turn around and the cover up begins at the bottom and moves to the top. It's quite hard to enact a new policy and have it filter down to the bottom."

When challenged that some of the information contained in the leaked information might be inaccurate, Assange had “no doubt” about the authenticity of the US military records. But he pointed out while all the documents were "true", the information contained in them might not be.

"When we publish material, what we say is: the document as we describe it is true. We publish CIA reports all the time. They are legitimate reports, but they don't mean the CIA is telling the truth," he said.

Most of the conflict in Afghanistan results from the "everyday squalor of war".