The Afghan government has denied that its forces beheaded four Taliban guerrillas this week in revenge for the similar killing of an interpreter for US-led forces and a government soldier.
Namatullah Tokhi, commander of the Afghan government's 27th militia division in Zabul province, told Reuters on Tuesday soldiers there beheaded four Taliban fighters a day earlier after guerrillas cut off the heads of the interpreter and the soldier.
But yesterday, Tokhi denied having spoken to Reuters and retracted a similar account of the beheadings given subsequently to the Associated Press news agency.
Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali told a news briefing the report of beheadings had "no reality".
"The commander says that he even did not give an interview to anyone in this regard," he said.
Jalali charged the reports on the beheadings were "second- and third-hand". Government troops obeyed the law, he said.
"And on the basis of the law, those who are captured should be investigated, his file go to an attorney, and the court can take the law into its hands to punish someone, not an individual," he said.
A few Taliban suspects have been brought to trial in Afghanistan since US-led forces overthrew the fundamentalists in late 2001, but most are held incommunicado by US or Afghan government forces.
On Wednesday, US-based Human Rights Watch said beheading of Taliban captives by Afghan forces would be a war crime and the troops and commanders responsible should be put on trial if they took place.
If US or other foreign forces were present and failed to try to stop the killings, they could be culpable as well, the human rights group said.
US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Tucker Mansager told a briefing he had no knowledge of any incident in Zabul beyond reports in the media.
Tokhi told Reuters on Tuesday the interpreter and soldier were beheaded after becoming separated from a patrol of Afghan and US-led foreign troops in the Arghandab district of Zabul.
He said government troops later captured and killed four Taliban guerrillas in the same way.
A spokesman for the Defence Ministry said on Wednesday the matter was under investigation, but stressed there was no involvement by the Western-trained Afghan National Army, a fledgling force fighting militants with US-led foreign troops.
Asked if the beheadings took place, he said: "We say that this act has not been carried out by the national army. We are investigating the report."
Militia forces, like Tokhi's, are on the payroll of the defence ministry and fight alongside US-led forces but are not part of the new national army.
Zabul and other southern provinces have been the scene of frequent clashes since US-led forces ousted the Taliban in 2001. The regime had sheltered al Qaeda, the militant network blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Taliban fighters have beheaded government soldiers in the past, but it is the first time a government commander has admitted government forces did the same in a conflict that has claimed more than 800 lives since last August.