Context of 'Morning, November 26, 2001: Northern Alliance Begins Shelling Prisoners at Qala-i-Jahngi'

A Northern Alliance tank fires on Qala-i-Janghi fortress. [Source: CNN/House of War]Northern Alliance troops establish a command post near Qala-i-Janghi’s northeast tower where they position a tank and begin shelling prisoners at the south end of the compound. [BBC, 12/1/2001; CNN, 8/3/2002]

Northern alliance fighters retaking Qala-i-Janghi fortress. [Source: CNN/House of War]After a number of survivors are discovered in the basement of the Qala-i-Janghi fortress, Northern Alliance soldiers drop artillery rockets into the basement and detonate them by fuses. [Newsweek, 12/1/2001; CNN, 8/3/2002] Northern Alliance soldiers then redirect an irrigation stream into the basement of a one-story building in the Qala-i-Janghi fortress where surviving Taliban soldiers are, flooding it with freezing cold water. John Walker Lindh almost drowns and suffers from hypothermia. Most of the remaining prisoners die because of the water, and throughout the basement “the stench from decaying human remains becomes particularly acute.” [Newsweek, 12/1/2001; United States of America v. John Walker Lindh, 6/13/2002 ]