Karzai flays US soldiers for deaths
Source: Agencies |
March 31, 2011, Thursday
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AFGHANISTAN'S president yesterday condemned the actions of a group of American soldiers charged with murder in the deaths of three unarmed Afghans and said they killed for entertainment, after taking drugs.
It was Hamid Karzai's first public mention of the actions of five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade who have been charged with murder and conspiracy in the deaths of the three men in southern Afghanistan.
His condemnation came a few days after Rolling Stone magazine published a series of graphic photos showing the soldiers posing next to the dead bodies. The German news magazine Der Spiegel had previously published three of them.
"They killed our youth for entertainment, they killed our elders for entertainment," Karzai told thousands of new teachers at a graduation ceremony in the capital Kabul.
Karzai said the American soldiers used opium and marijuana supplied by their Afghan translators. "So during the night they smoked marijuana and opium and in the morning they went out to kill local people," he said, referring to the drugs mentioned in court papers on the case.
Rolling Stone posted 17 photos from a cache of about 150 photos linked to the ongoing war crimes probe involving the soldiers from an Olympia, Washington-based platoon.
Two of the photos show soldiers charged in the case - Specialist Jeremy Morlock and Private 1st Class Andrew Holmes - crouching alongside an Afghan youth and lifting the victim's head by his hair. Two other photos show the body of the same Afghan youth, Gul Mudin, one of the victims in the case.
Karzai said that the boy was only 15 years old.
Morlock, the first of the five to be court-martialed, was sentenced last week to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of murder, as well as conspiracy and other charges. He said the killings were part of a deliberate plan to murder Afghan civilians.
So far, reaction to the photos has been muted in Afghanistan and Karzai had earlier said that incidents of Afghan civilian deaths at the hand of American soldiers should be seen as an exceptional case.
"Without a doubt the Americans are very good people, just like the Afghan people and other peoples of the world. They are not cruel people, they helped us with their own resources to develop our education and health sectors. They are working day and night to help us," Karzai also said during the speech yesterday.
It was Hamid Karzai's first public mention of the actions of five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade who have been charged with murder and conspiracy in the deaths of the three men in southern Afghanistan.
His condemnation came a few days after Rolling Stone magazine published a series of graphic photos showing the soldiers posing next to the dead bodies. The German news magazine Der Spiegel had previously published three of them.
"They killed our youth for entertainment, they killed our elders for entertainment," Karzai told thousands of new teachers at a graduation ceremony in the capital Kabul.
Karzai said the American soldiers used opium and marijuana supplied by their Afghan translators. "So during the night they smoked marijuana and opium and in the morning they went out to kill local people," he said, referring to the drugs mentioned in court papers on the case.
Rolling Stone posted 17 photos from a cache of about 150 photos linked to the ongoing war crimes probe involving the soldiers from an Olympia, Washington-based platoon.
Two of the photos show soldiers charged in the case - Specialist Jeremy Morlock and Private 1st Class Andrew Holmes - crouching alongside an Afghan youth and lifting the victim's head by his hair. Two other photos show the body of the same Afghan youth, Gul Mudin, one of the victims in the case.
Karzai said that the boy was only 15 years old.
Morlock, the first of the five to be court-martialed, was sentenced last week to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of murder, as well as conspiracy and other charges. He said the killings were part of a deliberate plan to murder Afghan civilians.
So far, reaction to the photos has been muted in Afghanistan and Karzai had earlier said that incidents of Afghan civilian deaths at the hand of American soldiers should be seen as an exceptional case.
"Without a doubt the Americans are very good people, just like the Afghan people and other peoples of the world. They are not cruel people, they helped us with their own resources to develop our education and health sectors. They are working day and night to help us," Karzai also said during the speech yesterday.
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