TALIBAN HIT LIST - Obtained by German TV

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Monday October 15 11:29 AM ET

German TV Says It Has Taliban 'Hit List'

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German public television station said Monday it had obtained what it described as a ``hit list'' allegedly drawn up by Afghanistan (news - web sites)'s Taliban rulers and naming opponents supposedly marked for death.

The list, purportedly signed by Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in July, comprised the names of 106 opponents of the Taliban, including former Afghan King Zahir Shah, the producers of the ARD channel's Report Mainz investigative current affairs program said in a statement.

A journalist working on the program, due to be broadcast later Monday, told Reuters that the list, supposedly drawn up months before the present U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan, did not include names of Western leaders.

German police said they had received a copy of the list from ARD and were checking its authenticity.

Some of the names on the list, said to have been faxed to Taliban representations abroad, were followed by the word ''killed,'' written in English, ARD said.

The rest of the four-page document was written in Pashto, language of the big Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan. A foreword to the list read: ``A solution has to be found for those that live abroad. You have a free hand to decide what to do about these people.''

Human rights group Amnesty International has drawn attention to the killing of Afghan refugees abroad. In January 1999, Amnesty said it had found a hit list circulating in northwestern Pakistan and that some of those on it had been killed.

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2001


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