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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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April 15th,
2007 - Marines Killed Civilians, U.S. Says |
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Marines Killed Civilians,
U.S. Says Military Reports 10 Afghans Died And 33 Were Hurt By Ann Scott Tyson and Josh White Washington Post April 15, 2007; A01 A preliminary U.S. military
investigation indicates that more than 40 Afghans killed or wounded by
Marines after a suicide bombing in a village near Jalalabad last month were
civilians, the U.S. commander who ordered the probe said yesterday. Maj. Gen. Frank H. Kearney
III, head of Special Operations Command Central, also said there is no
evidence that the Marine Special Operations platoon came under small-arms
fire after the bombing, although the Marines reported taking enemy fire and
seeing people with weapons. The troops continued shooting at perceived
threats as they traveled miles from the site of the March 4 attack, he said.
They hit several vehicles, killing at least 10 people and wounding 33, among them
children and elderly villagers. "We found ... no brass
that we can confirm that small-arms fire came at them," Kearney said,
referring to ammunition casings. "We have testimony from Marines that is
in conflict with unanimous testimony from civilians at the sites,"
Kearney said in a telephone interview from his headquarters in Qatar, where
he oversees all U.S. Special Operations forces in the region, including in
Afghanistan and Iraq. The results of the
preliminary investigation, which are not conclusive, are similar to the
findings of an official Afghan human rights inquiry and contradict initial
reports that the civilians might have been killed in a small-arms attack that
followed the suicide bombing. "We certainly believe
it's possible that the incoming fire from the ambush was wholly or partly
responsible for the civilian casualties," Maj. William Mitchell, a U.S.
military spokesman in Afghanistan, said immediately after the March 4 attack,
according to a BBC report. Yesterday, however, Kearney
said of the killed and wounded: "My investigating officer believes those
folks were innocent. ... We were unable to find evidence that those were
fighters." On Kearney's orders, the
Naval Criminal Investigative Service is conducting a probe that could lead to
courts-martial of those involved. The military investigation
found direct evidence, such as broken glass, showing that the Marines kept
firing for about three miles as they left the ambush site in a convoy,
Kearney said. But he did not dispute allegations from the Afghan human rights
investigation that the shooting had gone on much longer. "We do not dispute 16
kilometers," Kearney said; the official Afghan human rights
investigation determined the shooting went on for that distance, 10 miles.
But Kearney said that "we did not find physical evidence" beyond
three miles. The civilian death and
injury toll in the incident is one of the largest for which coalition troops
have been accused since the war in Afghanistan began in 2001. "This was a single incident
that had a catastrophic outcome from a perceptions point of view,"
Kearney said. "There was an inordinate amount of civilian deaths as a
result of" the suicide bombing, which he said "had not much effect
on our convoy." He added: "Everyone takes this very, very
seriously." One Marine was injured by
shrapnel in the suicide bombing, but there was no need for medical
evacuation. The Marines Special
Operations company had begun operations from its base in Jalalabad about Feb.
19, Kearney said, and the platoon was conducting a patrol to familiarize
itself with local routes on March 4 when the ambush took place. The six-Humvee convoy had
stopped at another U.S. camp near the Pakistan border and was on its way back
to Jalalabad when a Toyota van moved to the shoulder along with other
oncoming traffic. The van suddenly swerved between the first and second
Humvees, and the suicide bomber detonated the bomb, Kearney said. Marines in the convoy
believed that they were taking enemy fire from several locations along the
sides of the road, Kearney said. They deemed vehicles along the road threats
and shot at five or six of them - one because it failed to respond to their
direction, and another because it appeared to be trying to force them in a
certain direction, Kearney said. "They reported
receiving enemy fire from a number of locations. ... They believed they saw
folks with weapons," he said. The swift U.S. military
response to the Afghanistan incident and Kearney's candor about the
investigation contrasts with the much slower and more guarded response to
other cases involving alleged killings of civilians by U.S. troops, such as
the one in Haditha, Iraq, in 2005. The investigation found 10
killed and 33 wounded, while an official Afghan report put the numbers at 12
killed and 35 wounded. The Afghanistan Independent
Human Rights Commission released its report on the incident yesterday, along
with a separate, more general report on violations of international
humanitarian law across the country in recent months. The second study said
actions by the Taliban, Afghan national forces and international forces
regularly put civilian lives at risk. The commission's inquiry
into the March 4 incident, reported in The Washington Post yesterday, found
that a 4-year-old girl, a 1-year-old boy and three elderly villagers were
among the dead. Khaleeq Ahmad, a spokesman
for Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, said yesterday that he had not
yet seen the human rights commission report and could not comment on it.
Karzai was traveling yesterday in Jalalabad on an unrelated matter, Ahmad
said. Kearney said that his
command's "major concern is to protect the Afghan people" but that
the platoon's alleged actions had made it impossible for the unit to continue
its mission in Afghanistan. Late last month he ordered the platoon of about
30 men and its 120-man parent unit, a Marine Special Operations company, to
withdraw from Afghanistan, where it had been operating from a small base in
eastern Nangahar province. Kearney said other, lesser
factors also influenced his decision to remove the company: another incident
involving civilians in which members of the unit had opened fire, a vehicle
accident, and disciplinary and administrative problems. "If we employed them
and they had another engagement ... they would never get a fair judgment
regardless of what occurred," Kearney said. The Marines are easily
distinguishable because they wear different uniforms from other U.S. forces. The Marines were among the
more than 27,000 U.S. troops now battling a resurgent Taliban and other
fighters in Afghanistan, primarily in the south and along the eastern border
with Pakistan, where the ambush took place. More than half the U.S. forces
fall under NATO command, but the rest, including all Special Operations
forces, remain under U.S. command. External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/14/AR2007041400603.html |