August 24, 2009

Voters targeted after Afghan polls

The Taliban has released footage of its fighters stopping Afghan citizens to see if they have voted, and abducting those who have.
The video footage, obtained by Al Jazeera and broadcast on Monday, showed Taliban fighters manning an impromptu checkpoint, stopping vehicles and demanding to see people's fingers.
On election day indelible ink was used as an anti-fraud measure to prevent people voting twice.
Before the polls, there had been rumours that Taliban fighters would use the ink to identify those who had voted and cut off their fingers.
The footage showed men who the Taliban accused of having voted being marched, blindfolded, by Taliban fighters and reprimanded for "standing in line with the Jews" by casting their vote.
Violence and fraud
The footage is the latest blow to the elections, backed by the West, which were carried out amid Taliban attacks on August 20 and have since been beset by accusations of fraud.
To the relief of Western officials, the Taliban were unable to derail the vote, but turnout was low due to increased violence and Taliban threats.
Election results have still to be released, with preliminary results due on Tuesday and final official results due in September. But claims of vote rigging have escalated in the wake of the vote.
The contest is thought to have come down to Hamid Karzai, the incumbent president, and Abdullah Abdullah, his former foreign minister and main election rival.
Abdullah announced on Sunday that he had evidence of widespread vote rigging by Karzai's faction and that "there might have been thousands of violations throughout the country".
Allegations rejected
Karzai's camp denied the claim, saying it had submitted its own election complaints against Abdullah's faction.
The election complaints commission, a body made up of Afghan and UN-mandated officials, has said it is investigating 225 allegations of misconduct.
The election disputes have arisen against a backdrop of continued high levels of violence. One American and two Estonian soldiers were killed in two separate attacks in southern Afghanistan on Monday.
The Estonian government said that its soldiers were killed when a bomb hit their armoured personal carrier near the Pimon patrol base in the Nad-e-Ali area of Helmand province.
The US military did not provide details of the attack on its soldier.

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