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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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September 25th, 2006 - Two Deaths
Were a ‘Clue That Something's Wrong’ News
article by the Los Angeles Times |
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Two Deaths Were a ‘Clue That
Something's Wrong’ A Special Forces team in Afghanistan failed to alert its superiors.
Witnesses tell of torture. Special to The Times By Craig Pyes and Kevin Sack Los Angeles Times September 25, 2006 Wazi, Afghanistan - The
Green Berets of ODA 2021 were on high alert as their convoy rumbled down the
winding, rutted road that day in March 2003. The team had been tipped that
armed men loyal to the notoriously volatile warlord Pacha Khan Zadran lay in
wait around the bend. As they approached this
mountain village in eastern Afghanistan, the Americans spied the warlord's
fighters high on a ridge to their right. They scrambled for cover behind
their trucks and Humvees. Moments later, machine-gun
fire and rocket-propelled grenades rained down on their vulnerable position.
Though pinned down, the Americans responded with a fusillade of their own. "The air was snapping
like Rice Crispies [sic]," the Special Forces team's newly assigned
commander, Chief Warrant Officer Kenneth C. Waller, 32, wrote in a florid
after-action report. "So many rounds were flying back and forth that
lead was overcoming the oxygen in the air." The battle raged for 45
minutes, then A-10 attack planes and Apache helicopters flew in and strafed
the Afghans into retreat. There were no casualties
among the 17 Americans on patrol that day. "It seemed as if we had an
angelic bubble surrounding our position," Waller reported to
headquarters. Though Waller filed several
detailed and colorful accounts of the battle, he apparently omitted any
mention of what happened next. As some members of ODA 2021
pursued the warlord's men into the hills, others moved into the village to
search the mud-walled houses for fighters. They detained three unarmed
men for questioning. Two of them, brothers Jan and Wakil Mohammed, told the
soldiers they were just returning from evening prayers at the mosque and had
nothing to do with the shootout. Suddenly, another band of
five or six Green Berets emerged from the hills where they had been chasing
Pacha Khan's men. They had no interpreters. "Those soldiers were
running toward us and yelling in English, and we didn't understand what they
were saying," Jan Mohammed recalled in an interview. Amid the confusion,
he said, his brother grew frantic. Wakil, a woodcutter and father of two,
raised his hands and shouted in Pashto, "De Khoday day para ma me
vala!" according to his brother. "For God's sake, don't shoot
me!" There was a burst of gunfire
from one soldier, Jan Mohammed said, and three rounds ripped into Wakil. One
struck him in the mouth. He fell dead at his brother's feet. At day's end, Waller would report
to his chain of command that six enemy fighters had been killed in action. But the circumstances of
Wakil's death were not described in Waller's reports, and Army criminal
investigators would later determine that the killing could not be classified as
a battlefield casualty. Last year, they listed it as a murder. However, the
military has since reopened its probe, and investigators decline to say
whether the same charges are being pursued. It would not be the only
questionable death of a detainee in the custody of ODA 2021, nor the only one
that leaders of the 10-man field team would fail to disclose to superiors in
the Alabama National Guard's 20th Special Forces Group. Within days of the Wazi
killing, an 18-year-old Afghan army recruit named Jamal Naseer died after
being interrogated at the team's firebase in Gardez, about 25 miles to the
north. Multiple witnesses say his body showed signs of severe beating and
other abuse. His brother and six others also held at Gardez say they were
tortured. The commander over all
Special Forces in Afghanistan at the time, then-Col. James G.
"Greg" Champion, said in a brief interview that neither death was
reported up the chain of command. Champion, a National Guardsman who has
since been promoted to brigadier general, said he did not hear of the deaths
until 18 months later, when he learned that The Times was investigating. The team's battalion
commander also said that neither death was reported to him. "Two unreported deaths
in a few days are a clue that something's wrong" with that team, said a
military official familiar with the incidents, who asked not to be
identified. There were others who helped
keep the secrets of the base. The United Nations Assistance Mission in
Afghanistan, or UNAMA, which was responsible for monitoring human rights
abuses, was informed that Naseer's death in Gardez probably involved
"torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment" by Special Forces
troops. But U.N. officials acknowledge they did not report it to American
authorities for at least 13 months, and U.S. officials say it was never
reported at all. The provincial governor
helped conceal the mistreatment by arranging for the late-night removal of
Naseer's body from the military base. He also ordered the abrupt transfer of
the other detainees from the base to the custody of the local police chief
after they had been held many days beyond what military procedures allowed. Though U.S. commanders in
Afghanistan said they did not know about the death, word spread throughout
Paktia province, according to Gen. Hajji Abdul Sattar, the Paktia attorney
general for intelligence. He said no one spoke out or complained, however,
because "people were scared that … the same thing would happen to
them." The Army's Criminal
Investigation Command has been examining both deaths and apparent cover-ups
for two years, since learning about them from The Times and the Crimes of War
Project, a Washington-based nonprofit educational organization, which first
confirmed Naseer's death. ODA 2021's missions and
tactics became markedly more aggressive after Waller took charge of the
Special Forces detachment in February 2003, a month before the questionable
deaths in Wazi and Gardez. He recently had been reassigned from another
Special Forces unit, where some of his men complained that his gung-ho
leadership style put them at unnecessary risk. Waller was characterized by
several 20th Group officials as deeply affected by the Sept. 11 attacks and
having come to Afghanistan "spoiling for a fight." In Gardez, he was able to
set his sights squarely on Pacha Khan, the warlord who had been destabilizing
the countryside for months. Pacha Khan's men were
suspected of extorting illegal payments from truckers on the road from Gardez
to Khowst, supporting anti-government forces, and staging an ambush that
wounded the ODA's battalion chief during a Thanksgiving trip to Gardez. But at the Pentagon and
State Department, Pacha Khan was regarded as a political figure and thus a
problem for the new Afghan government, not the U.S. military. The Special
Forces team chafed at the political constraints on its freedom to go after
him. Local U.N. officials said
they were struck by how deeply personal the conflict between the team and the
warlord had become. One of the officials, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, recalled that one Green Beret likened the team's rivalry with
Pacha Khan to a blood feud. Another U.N. official said
the same American soldier had told him that "he was so frustrated with
[Pacha Khan] that he was going to kill him." Tea at Sato Kandaw Unmanned Predator aircraft
patrolled the skies over Paktia province, their cameras trained on the 17
checkpoints along the mountain road linking Khowst and Gardez. What they
recorded convinced U.S. intelligence officials that trucks hauling firewood
and produce were again being stopped and forced to pay bribes. At the most infamous
checkpoint, atop Sato Kandaw Pass, drivers typically had to pay $10 or $15,
according to a March 2, 2003, Army intelligence report. The money was being
split between Pacha Khan and a former Taliban official, Jalaludin Haqqani,
the report said. Situated on a bend
overlooking a sparsely vegetated valley, the Sato Kandaw checkpoint consisted
of living quarters and a small mosque used as an armory. The post was
controlled by a former Pacha Khan lieutenant named Ahmad Naseer, better known
as Commander Parre. He had recently defected to the Afghan government in
exchange for $3,000 and a truck provided by the CIA. He said he saw the
future of the country with the Americans, not with Pacha Khan. Despite the change in
management, reports of shakedowns persisted, along with complaints that
female travelers were being harassed and that a young boy was being held as a
sex slave. Sato Kandaw was enough of a
concern that Raz Mohammed Dalili, then the governor of Paktia, took the
unusual step of asking American troops to remove the checkpoint. Dalili, in
an interview, said he had made his request to a Special Forces soldier named
Mike. There was no ODA 2021 member
named Mike at the time, military documents show. However, Sgt. 1st Class
Michael E. MacMillan, an intelligence analyst and member of the regular
Army's 7th Special Forces Group at Ft. Bragg, N.C., was then working with the
Gardez unit. Described in correspondence
from Waller as the team's "intelligence agent," MacMillan was
assigned to conduct interrogations and collect information for combat
operations, including one at Sato Kandaw, according to several people
familiar with the team. MacMillan, contacted at his home in North Carolina,
declined to be interviewed for this report and shut his door. Parre and his men had their
guards down when the ODA (for Operational Detachment Alpha) arrived at Sato
Kandaw on the chilly morning of March 5. He said that they shook hands and
that the soldier he knew as Mike asked to talk over green tea. Parre said he knew Mike
because the Americans had stopped by from time to time to collect
intelligence. The checkpoint commander thought it odd when some of the
Americans scrambled to take positions along the road and on the high bluffs,
but Mike assured him it was merely a precaution. Inside, Parre began cutting
chocolate as his cook prepared the tea. Mike asked about his relationship
with Pacha Khan. Parre said that before he could respond, two men jumped him
from behind, pushing him to the ground so that he could barely breathe. "They covered me with a
hood," Parre said. "The interpreter translated, 'If you move, we'll
kill you.' And I told him, 'If there is any problem, we can solve it through
negotiation…. We are your friends.' " In the next room, other American
soldiers quickly subdued Parre's men, including his 18-year-old brother,
Jamal Naseer. The Afghans were cuffed, hooded and tossed by their bound limbs
into vehicles, Parre said. The Americans also found the
boy who allegedly had been pressed into sexual slavery and made plans to
return him to his family. Before leaving, ODA 2021 confiscated a stash of
munitions and mostly unserviceable weapons and blew them up. Allegations of Abuse The detainees said the
physical abuse began as soon as they reached the Gardez firebase. "We were kicked in the
small of our back and told to stay straight, and cold water was poured over
our body in the open air," Parre told The Times. "They put stones
under our knees. We were continuously forced to stay on our knees until we
lost the sensation of our legs and couldn't walk." He said an interrogator
ripped off one of his toenails. At another point, he said, someone fired four
rounds near his head. The other seven detainees, among them a 23-year-old
with one leg, also reported abuse. Because the detainees were
hooded through much of their detention, they said, they could not identify
their interrogators, except to note that their speech sounded American. "They were asking me
international questions," Parre said. "Have you met any Al Qaeda
leader? Have you gone to Pakistan? To Iran? And who was creating trouble on
the highway? But I didn't know any of these things." He said there were also
questions about Pacha Khan. Interrogators had obtained a note from the
warlord to Parre promising to make him a division commander. Parre said he
told the Americans they no longer had ties. As the beatings continued,
he said, an Afghan interpreter pleaded with him to give the interrogators
what they wanted. "Just say anything to get it to stop," Parre
quoted the interpreter as saying. He said there were times he felt seconds
from death. "I can't tell you the feeling," he said. "Half
dead. Half alive." An American in Gardez at the
time said Afghan soldiers working with the Special Forces complained to
someone on the team about the mistreatment. The American, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, also told The Times that interrogations were taken
over after a day or two by a Navy SEAL. The detainees were moved into a tent
at a back corner of the base, out of sight, he said. The Times could not verify
any involvement by the Navy commandos, but internal military documents show
that SEALs were operating around Gardez during the period. A spokesman for
the Naval Criminal Investigative Service said it "was not alerted at any
time to the potential of SEAL involvement." The detention of Parre and
his men was no secret in the region. An intelligence summary filed by ODA
2021 shortly after the arrests reported ecstatic reactions from both the
Afghan government and the local populace. Gov. Dalili dropped by the firebase
to offer congratulations. He reported that President Hamid Karzai was
"very pleased," the summary said. The team's intelligence
reports about the operation flashed across computer screens at the Army's
operations center in Bagram, said someone who was present. They also were
distributed to NATO forces. As required, the team
reported the detentions to the 20th Group's 1st Battalion, and the
information was passed along to the Combined Joint Special Operations Task
Force, the command over all Special Forces in Afghanistan. The detainees were
"still undergoing interviews," the team reported after a day,
adding, "A lot of intelligence is being generated for follow-on
operations." Under Army procedures, Parre
and his men should either have been released after four days or sent to a
holding facility in Bagram if interrogations yielded evidence of ties to the
Taliban or Al Qaeda. Internal military records
show that after two days of questioning, the Americans did not plan to send
the detainees to Bagram. They had been notified earlier in their tour that
the arrival of battered prisoners at that base might prompt an investigation,
according to the records. But ODA 2021 also was
reluctant to transfer the detainees to local police custody. A March 6 communique
from the Special Forces team expressed doubts about the Gardez police chief's
loyalty and reliability and said ODA 2021 was working with the governor to
find other ways to keep the Sato Kandaw detainees in custody. At a meeting of security
authorities in Gardez, Mike from ODA 2021 warned the police chief and the
other local commanders that he would kill them if they released his
prisoners, according to U.N. officials who reacted angrily to the blunt talk. For the moment, however,
Parre and his men remained in custody at the firebase, and the beatings
continued. Mission to Wazi A week after their
successful Sato Kandaw operation, Waller and ODA 2021 were ready to push
farther into Pacha Khan country. Col. Champion approved plans for what the
team described as a simple reconnaissance patrol of the Wazi district. However, there are
indications Waller wanted his team to be prepared for more. He borrowed two soldiers
from another Special Forces team, a security detachment generally excluded
from combat operations. And he tried unsuccessfully to enlist members of a
commando unit that reported to a different chain of command. Waller's men loaded an extra
machine gun into each truck and stacked in so much ammunition that there was
little room for their feet. "We were going hunting this time," one
team member said. If they left Gardez looking
for a fight, they found it with Pacha Khan's men on the road outside Wazi. In his post-battle reports,
Waller took obvious relish in describing one of his team's kills to his
battalion commander, Lt. Col. Steven W. Duff, who had been wounded in the
Thanksgiving ambush in the same region. Waller told Duff that the
team's weaponry sergeant, Joseph T. "Todd" Henderson, "got one
of the bastards associated with shooting you. The bastard nearly exploded as
the shell ripped through his chest cavity." The team leader said that
his weaponry sergeant "takes this personally since he was on your convoy
when you were shot…. Sorry we could not have got them all." Waller concluded: "This
team does not have any [sissies]. You should have seen them laughing during
the fight …. Told you we would find them." The day's events at Wazi had
not ended with the shooting of Wakil Mohammed. The victim's brother, Jan, was
taken into custody along with a neighbor, Dawood Khan. Both men told The Times that
while held overnight in Gardez, they were forced to kneel and press their
foreheads against a wall. Every time they sat back, they said, they were
kicked in the small of the back and the chest. "At first they didn't
ask us any questions," Mohammed said. "Everyone who was there took
turns kicking me, and when I fell on the ground from the blows they started
to stomp on me. We were forced to stay on our knees, and my knees were
injured from the stones on the ground. I felt really bad pain in my
chest." He said the Americans
eventually asked him about his brother, but he couldn't concentrate. "I
kept seeing my brother's face and the gunshot in his mouth," he said. Dawood Khan said his
interrogators asked whether Mohammed was one of Pacha Khan's commanders.
"I told them, 'No, he has no connection,' " he said. He said that after being
beaten he was twice dunked in a tub of icy water and submerged to the verge
of drowning. He said he and Mohammed were forced to stay awake through a cold
night. The two villagers were
released the next day with clean sets of clothing. A report to headquarters
described them as cooperative. Heroes and ‘Idiots’ Waller's bosses at battalion
headquarters were thrilled the team had escaped casualties in the attack at
Wazi. The National Guardsmen had "performed heroically," a
battalion operations officer wrote to Waller, encouraging him to nominate his
men for battlefield awards. He did, later nominating
every soldier in the fight, including himself, for either the Silver or Bronze
Star, according to military documents. But in the same laudatory
message, the operations officer informed Waller that he had recommended his
removal from command of ODA 2021 for, "among other things, the extremely
unprofessional remarks" in his reports. "This is yet another
example in a long line of incidents with you that has resulted in this
battalion, and more importantly, your teams looking like idiots instead of
getting the recognition they rightfully deserve," the battalion officer
wrote. By this time, Champion's
20th Special Forces Group was in the process of turning over the Special
Operations task force to its replacement, the 3rd Special Forces Group, based
at Ft. Bragg. The new guys were regular Army all the way, and they did not
much care for Waller's references to the air "snapping like Rice
Crispies" or the team's "angelic bubble" of protection, the
operations officer wrote. "All they see is that
we are a Guard unit operating unprofessionally in a combat zone," he
wrote. "If Champion wasn't in command yesterday, you would be in a world
of shit right now." A Death in Gardez In Gardez, the days of
detention for Parre and his men continued to mount. Parre said he believed his
brother, Jamal, was subjected to the harshest interrogation because, at only
18, he was perceived to be the most vulnerable. When he first saw Jamal a few
days after their capture, his brother's body was already black and blue and
swollen, Parre said. He said Jamal told him the
Americans had forced him to stand with arms and legs outstretched as they
took turns beating him. He was moaning about the pain in his kidneys and
back, Parre said. On the afternoon Jamal died
— Parre fixes the date at March 16, 2003, though that could not be verified —
he saw two men assisting his brother, who was having difficulty walking.
There was no interpreter, Parre said, so he and an American soldier
pantomimed their way through a discussion of Jamal's condition. First the American jabbed a
finger into his arm to show that Jamal had been given an IV drip, Parre said.
Then he shook his head to suggest it hadn't worked. He pumped his fist like a
heart, and again shook his head negatively. Parre said he didn't fully understand
at the time, but he feared the worst. Eventually, he was escorted into a tent
to see his brother. "I thought he was
smiling at me, and so I smiled back," Parre recounted. "I thought
Jamal wanted to tell me that I was worrying for nothing. And I went to him
and shook him and said, 'Jamalah, Jamalah,' and then I realized that he had
been martyred." Parre adjusted the body so
that Jamal's head pointed to Mecca, and started to cry. Later that night, Parre
said, several Americans entered the tent, put their hands over their hearts
and offered condolences. But he said the man he knew as Mike asserted that
Jamal had died of an illness, not at the hands of the Americans. "No, my brother was
healthy," Parre said he responded. "His brain, his heart, his legs,
he was not sick. He had no history of sickness or injury in any part of his
body. He died because of your cruelty." ODA 2021 held a team meeting
shortly after Jamal's death, according to an American soldier based in
Gardez. The team was advised that the Afghan had died of a sex-related
infection that shut down his kidneys, the soldier said. The point of the
meeting, he said, was "to make sure everybody's on the same sheet of
paper — this is what happened to the man," in case there was an investigation. Capt. Craig Mallak, medical
examiner for the U.S. armed forces, said Naseer's death was never reported to
his office. He said it would have been required unless the detainee was
deemed to have died of natural causes. Authorities at a civilian hospital in
Gardez, where Naseer's body was transferred, said they performed no autopsy. A hospital worker who
prepared the body for burial said in an interview that "it was
completely black." Hajji Abdul Qayum said Jamal's face was "dark
and looked like it was burned." He said it was "completely swollen,
as were his palms, and the soles of his feet were swollen double in
size." "I have no idea what he
might have been beaten with," the hospital worker said. Naseer's mother, Kajala,
also viewed her son's body before burial. She told Afghan military
investigators that "the entire body was full of injuries." Dr. Michael Baden, a
prominent forensic pathologist who works for the New York State Police, said
the descriptions were inconsistent with death by organ failure. "You can't
confuse those," he said. "It sounds very much like blunt
trauma." Scars, No Charges After Jamal died, Gov.
Dalili arranged for the late-night transfer of the body to the local
hospital, according to an Afghan military inquiry. He also ordered the transfers
of Parre and his men to the local jail. There, local physician Aziz
Ulrahman examined the prisoners and described them as battered and bruised,
with seeping, unbandaged wounds. He said Parre's feet were black. "We
have no terminology for that," he said. "It was caused by blunt-force
trauma." A few days later, a
delegation from Afghanistan's Judicial Reform Commission happened to visit
the Gardez police station and came face to face with Parre and his men. The
delegation, which included a representative from the Italian Embassy and
several Afghan jurists, did not report the prisoners' condition, although
witnesses said it was discussed. A political officer with the
U.N. mission in Afghanistan was with the group and interviewed Parre and his
men. He wrote a detailed memo noting that one Afghan soldier had died in U.S.
custody and raising the possibility that Special Forces might have been
involved in "cruel and inhuman treatment" of detainees. Though his memo cautioned
that the detainees' accounts should not be taken at face value, it said their
wounds and injuries "seemed consistent with their accounts of beating
and torture." He recommended that the U.N. report the incident for
investigation. There is no record that U.N.
officials informed U.S. or coalition authorities about the Gardez case for at
least 13 months, if at all. Several U.N. officials
acknowledged that the report seemed to have fallen into "a black
hole" after making its way to the mission's headquarters in Kabul, the
Afghan capital. It was only in the spring of
2004, U.N. officials said, that they forwarded the information to the U.S.
Embassy in Kabul. However, Zalmay Khalilzad, who was then the U.S. ambassador
to Afghanistan, said he had no recollection of hearing about the case, and no
mention of the death was found in embassy records, a spokesman said. Both Lakhdar Brahimi, head
of the U.N. assistance mission when Jamal Naseer died, and his successor,
Jean Arnault, declined to comment on the U.N.'s handling of the matter. Parre and his companions
were later moved secretly to a civilian prison in Kabul, still without any
formal charges. Afghan military prosecutors immediately launched an
investigation into their unexplained detention. That inquiry produced a
117-page report asserting that the detainees had been tortured and that there
was a "strong probability" that one of the men had been
"murdered." The report speculated that the prolonged imprisonment
was intended to give the detainees' wounds time to heal. When the Afghan attorney
general ordered all seven released, it came after 58 days of captivity. No
charges were ever filed against any of the men. The Last Laugh It wasn't long after Parre
and his men were ousted from Sato Kandaw that ODA 2021 got word that Pacha
Khan had reclaimed the checkpoint. The team mounted another patrol to the
mountain pass, where a confrontation on the road erupted in gunfire. The circumstances remain in
dispute. ODA 2021 reported that an enemy vehicle had come barreling toward
the American convoy and that the driver had been "engaged and killed,"
while five other men escaped. According to Pacha Khan's
family, the driver was on his way to get food for the checkpoint's soldiers.
The dead driver was the warlord's eldest son, Jalani Khan. His body was left
on the roadside. Several days later, the team
reported that every checkpoint along the road from Khowst to Gardez seemed to
be clear. Pacha Khan's influence was waning, and much of the credit went to
Waller's team. "The guys in Gardez …
are having a significant effect on the area," an official with the
Special Operations task force wrote to colleagues. But with tensions inflamed
by the killing of Pacha Khan's son, and with the 20th Group about to head
home, Champion reined in the team. Waller's proposals for two patrols targeting
the warlord were rejected. The commander's "gut
reaction," explained a March 28 note to Duff from Champion's staff,
"is that Chief Waller is just out looking for another fight with PKZ,
whom we've been told to back off of …. The [commander] is concerned that guys
are rattling the tree, but what they are getting is criminal elements [versus
terrorists], and we are not cops." As they packed their gear in
early April, the 20th Group's field commanders were frustrated to be leaving
the warlord at large. "Pacha Khan Zadran is
probably now laughing at the Americans," the commander of the Special
Forces team in Khowst wrote to superiors. Maj. Rick Rhyne, the
incoming 3rd Group operations chief, shrugged off the complaint. "There is a reason,
most likely political, that we cannot touch him," he wrote. "He can
laugh all he wants to." Epilogue: Inquiries Are Underway, so Far Without Charges In the years since ODA 2021
returned to its red-clay roots, the interrogation methods practiced by some
Special Forces units in Afghanistan migrated to Iraq. Early warnings seem to have
been disregarded. In Afghanistan, the International Committee of the Red
Cross complained of mistreatment as early as December 2002. It delivered a
private report to top U.S. military commanders alleging widespread abuse at
the firebases at the very time Parre and his men were being held in Gardez. The Red Cross had
interviewed more than 40 former firebase detainees who described beatings,
kickings, verbal threats, sleep and food deprivation, immersion in icy water
and prolonged exposure to extreme cold, according to a copy of the previously
undisclosed report, which was obtained from U.S. government sources. Initially, U.S. officials
reacted skeptically, dismissing the Red Cross claims. "Don't get all spun up
on this," advised Maj. Rhyne, the Special Operations officer, in a note
to battalion commanders. "Just let the teams know there were allegations
but no proof." Capt. Sean McMahon, a judge
advocate general for the Special Operations task force, wrote to others on
the headquarters staff that the allegations were vague. But he said Lt. Gen.
Dan McNeill, then commander of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, wanted all interrogators
reminded of proper methods. The interrogators needed to
understand, McMahon wrote, that "if they are implementing certain
procedures, they must cease." Some members of ODA 2021
have come under criminal investigation stemming from the deaths of Jamal
Naseer and Wakil Mohammed. No one has been charged, and the names of those
targeted by the inquiry have not been released. The Army's Criminal
Investigation Command has no timetable for completing the inquiries into
either death, spokesman Christopher P. Grey said. The investigations have
proved challenging, he said, because of difficulties locating witnesses and
barriers in language and culture. The families refused to allow the
exhumation of either victim, citing religious beliefs. But the investigators also
have been hampered by missteps. When the CID first looked
into Naseer's death, it was unable to identify the victim and dropped the
matter quickly. After he was identified by The Times and the Crimes of War
Project, the case was reopened. In Mohammed's case, investigators operated
for at least a year under the assumption that he had died two months earlier
than he did. Last year, Army
investigators recommended that one soldier be charged with murder in the Wazi
shooting, and another with dereliction of duty for not reporting the
incident. The recommendations were sent to the U.S. Army Special Forces
Command at Ft. Bragg. The case was reopened last
year, and the CID spokesman would not say whether the agency was pursuing
similar charges more than a year later. The Times attempted to
interview every member of ODA 2021 and others in the chain of command. One
who declined to be interviewed was former team leader Waller, who said he
preferred to let the military legal system finish its work. "I'm not at
liberty to discuss it while it's under investigation," he said. Waller
continues to work full time at the 20th Group headquarters. Champion, the
National Guard colonel who directed all Special Forces in Afghanistan in
2002-03, was promoted to general in 2004. He recently completed a tour as
deputy commanding general over all operations in Afghanistan. He acknowledged in a
telephone interview that he had been contacted by Army investigators, but he
declined to comment further. "We'll see what happens
with the investigation and where it goes," he said. Pacha Khan remained a
problem for the American forces well after the 20th Group's departure. Over the next two years,
however, the warlord grudgingly ended hostilities with the Afghan government
and became part of it. In 2004, his youngest son
was appointed governor of the new administrative district of Wazi Zadran. And
last fall, the warlord himself made a bid for elected office. Today, the nemesis of ODA
2021 is a member of the new Afghan parliament. About this series "Firebase Gardez"
examines the deployment to Afghanistan of a decorated Alabama National Guard
unit. It is the result of a yearlong investigation in the U.S. and
Afghanistan by Times staff writer Kevin Sack and freelance investigative
journalist Craig Pyes. It was written by Sack. Pyes, a two-time Pulitzer
Prize winner and frequent contributor to the newspaper, reported from
Afghanistan jointly for The Times and the Crimes of War Project, a
Washington-based nonprofit that describes itself as "a collaboration of
journalists, lawyers and scholars dedicated to raising public awareness of
the laws of war." In 2004, the group provided The Times with the first
evidence of an unreported Afghan death in U.S. custody and joined with the
newspaper to investigate further. That led to a military inquiry by the
Army's Criminal Investigation Command that continues today. The Times reviewed thousands
of pages of internal military documents to reconstruct the period when a
10-member Special Forces combat team called ODA 2021 (for Operational
Detachment Alpha) was assigned to the Gardez firebase. Every member of the team was
contacted. Most declined to be interviewed or referred reporters to public
affairs officers. The Army and all of its subordinate commands - the U.S.
Central Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, Army Special Forces
Command, 20th Special Forces Group and the Alabama National Guard - declined
to comment. Times researchers Nona Yates
and Janet Lundblad contributed to these reports. External link:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-torture25sep25,0,5483612,full.story |