Images of vulnerable Afghans removed from Pentagon website

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon connected Monday said it has temporarily removed from its ocular accusation website tens of thousands of photograph and video images of Afghans who supported the U.S. warfare effort and were deemed susceptible to Taliban retaliation.

Pentagon property caput John Kirby said that starting successful August during the U.S.-led evacuation, each imagery was removed that shows the faces oregon different identifiable features of susceptible Afghans. He said the images volition beryllium returned to the nationalist domain erstwhile it is deemed safe.

Kirby said 124,000 photos and 17,000 videos were removed and archived connected the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.

“It was a mammoth undertaking and took america a agelong clip — astir 2 months,” Kirby said, adding that it is not yet completed. “We did it retired of an abundance of caution, retired of respect for the work that we person to these individuals and to their families, and astatine the close clip erstwhile it's appropriate, we volition perfectly republish those images.”

Ad

Kirby said his determination was successful enactment with a interest passim the U.S. authorities that the Taliban, who rapidly defeated the Afghan information forces past summertime and took power of Kabul connected Aug. 15, would question to retaliate against Afghans who had helped the United States during its 20-year warfare effort.

“Those concerns were valid, and we marque nary apology whatsoever for making this decision. I inactive judge it was the close happening to do,” helium added. “Nothing's been deleted from the record. It's simply being archived until we judge it's the due clip to enactment them backmost up.”

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.