User:Geo Swan/Guantanamo/al Janki prison riot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Al-Janki prison, in the vicinity of Mazari Sharif, Afghanistan is most noteworthy as the site of a prison uprising among suspects captured by the Northern Alliance when United States forces invaded Afghanistan following the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001.
The Taliban government of Afghanistan had been providing sanctuary to al Qaeda, the group responsible for the attacks on the United States, so the United States invaded Afghanistan, in order to capture the al Qaeda's leaders.
[edit] The bounty program
Template:TalibanBounty
United States President George W. Bush announced a bounty program, saying that Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda's leader, Mullah Muhammed Omar, the Taliban's leader, were "wanted, dead or alive", and that, just as in America's old west, the United States would pay a bounty of $25 million for the death, or capture.
The bounty program applied to lesser members of the al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, with smaller bounties for their capture. The bounty program even applied to those suspected of being foot soldiers. Critics assert that the bounty was applied to widely:
- That unscrupulous Afghans falsely alleged their neighbors were members of the Taliban, in order to settle local feuds.
- That unscrupulous Afghans falsely alleged their own senile relatives were members of the Taliban, brought them in, to collect the bounty, so they would no longer have to care for them.
- That unscrupulous Afghan warlords had their men round up innocent refugees, and the indigent, and turned them in, to collect the bounties on them.
- That every Arab in Afghanistan was at risk of being captured and turned in for a bounty, without regard to whether they were an aid worker, a teacher, or a veteran of the battle against Afghanistan's Soviet invaders, who had settled in Afghanistan following the liberation.
