Germany gave assassination list to secret U.S. unit!
BERLIN, Germany - August 3, 2010 - The German government supplied a secret Pentagon task force with names of Taliban leaders that the U.S. then could target for assassination, documents show.
Buried in the 92,000 pages of documents released by the web site Wikileaks is evidence that shows the German government abetted a secret program to kill or capture Taliban leaders. The German government has already been helping the U.S. generate a "hit list" through NATO, but this list went a step farther, bypassing transparency and judicial process.
The once-secret list, titled the "Joint Prioritized Effects List," was used by the Pentagon's Task Force 373 to target, kill and capture Taliban leaders.
"Thanks to the WikiLeaks revelations, war-weary Germany now knows that German officials added names to the JPEL at least 13 times," the German publication Der Spiegel wrote Monday.
"On this list, 13 names translate into 13 potential death warrants. The Germans only mark their candidates with a C for "capture," and not with a K for "kill." But in fact all International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops are authorized to shoot and kill candidates on the JPEL list if, for example, they attempt to avoid capture by fleeing. In other words, although German elite troops do not use the kill option themselves, Germany does provide its tacit approval of the killing of candidates in the zone under its control in northern Afghanistan."
