US apologizes for more Afghan 'kill team' photos

Der Spiegel/Wikimedia Commons image

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US military apologized again Monday after Rolling Stone published more photos and videos of members of an alleged rogue army unit "kill team" accused of killing Afghan civilians for sport.

A week after one soldier was jailed after striking a plea bargain to testify against the alleged ringleader, the weekly magazine published a series of graphic images and a long story including extensive detail of the allegations.

"The photos published by Rolling Stone are disturbing and in striking contrast to the standards and values of the United States Army," said a Pentagon statement.
"Like those published by Der Spiegel, the Army apologizes for the distress these latest photos cause," it said, referring to an initial set of less graphic pictures published by the German magazine last week.

The Rolling Stone pictures, under the headline "the Kill Team," included unblurred versions of photos published by Der Spiegel showing soldiers posing with the bloodied body of an Afghan youth, holding the head up to the camera.

Battling to avoid a repetition of the Abu Ghraib scandal triggered by release of pictures of US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, the Pentagon apologized after Der Spiegel's publication of images last week.

The new pictures were accompanied by two videos, including one set to a heavy rock soundtrack -- and reportedly shared round among soldiers -- showing two men being killed after allegedly planting a roadside bomb.

The accompanying story related how the youth shown in the still pictures, identified later as Gul Mudin, a farm worker, was picked out on January 15 last year as the first victim of the so-called "kill team."

Corporal Jeremy Morlock -- who was jailed for 24 years last week -- and Private Andrew Holmes initially threw a grenade at the teenager before gunning him down, and pretending he had attacked them with the grenade.

The little finger of the boy's right hand is missing, allegedly cut off as a trophy.

In the following months they and others staged a number of such killings, according to the Rolling Stone account, citing other witnesses questioned after the killings were revealed by a fellow soldier.

Morlock, one of five soldiers charged with murder and tried in a military court south of Seattle, is expected to be the star witness in the court martial of the alleged ringleader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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US soldier pleads guilty over Afghan killings

US Corporal Jeremy Morlock
© AFP/US Army/File

AFP

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Washington (AFP) - A US soldier pleaded guilty Wednesday to targeting Afghan civilians for execution, as part of a rogue US army unit in southern Afghanistan last year.

Corporal Jeremy Morlock, who is set to testify against four co-accused, admitted murdering or helping to kill three men, and using illegally obtained Afghan weapons to make it appear that the victims were enemy combatants.

Morlock is the first soldier to face court martial out of five members of a rogue US Army unit from the Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Division's Stryker brigade, based out of Fort Lewis, Washington.

They were deployed in the southern Kandahar region of Afghanistan over several months early last year.


In addition to allegations that the soldiers formed a so-called "kill squad," prosecutors charged Morlock and other members of his unit with taking gruesome trophies in the form of bones from dead Afghans and smoking hashish.

They also allegedly assaulted another soldier who blew the whistle on the unit's drug use and violence.

Morlock, at times speaking in a barely audible mumble, explained the plot to start targeting civilians was first hatched in November 2009.


Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs -- who Morlock fingers as the ring-leader -- showed the men a stash of weapons he had illegally obtained in Afghanistan, and allegedly led them in formulating a plan to shoot people and plant one of the weapons on the body to make it look as if the killing was in self-defense.

"Were you going to shoot at (civilians) to scare them and it got out of hand?" Judge Lieutenant Colonel Kwasi Hawks asked the hearing.

"The plan was to kill people," Morlock replied without any hesitation.

The first victim of the kill squad died in January 2010. Morlock said the unit was in a village so that army leaders could meet with elders.

He and Private Andrew Holmes were on patrol when a man walked toward the two soldiers, who positioned themselves behind a waist-high wall.

Morlock tossed a grenade over the wall near himself and Holmes to make it appear as if the Afghan man had thrown it, and Holmes fired at the man with his machine gun.

Morlock is also the government's star witness against the four other soldiers accused over the execution of Afghan civilians -- in particular the alleged ring-leader, Gibbs.

The three others facing charges are Holmes, Specialist Michael Wagnon, and Specialist Adam Winfield.

Morlock led Army investigators to gruesome trophies allegedly taken from the bodies of civilians killed by the rogue.

At a pre-trial hearing for Holmes in November, Special Agent Benjamin Stevenson testified that, using a map drawn by Morlock, he found severed fingers in a large protective barrier near where the soldiers lived.

On Monday this week the German news magazine Der Spiegel published three grisly pictures, out of a reported cache of 4,000 documents, showing Morlock and Holmes holding up the bloodied head of a corpse.

Attorneys for the other accused soldiers have been painting Morlock as a drug-addled, mentally unstable, and fundamentally unreliable witness.

At a pre-trial hearing in November 2010 for Gibbs, defense attorney Phillip Stackhouse argued that his client had played no role in the killings.

Stackhouse asked the judge presiding over that hearing to consider Gibbs's assertion of innocence "with these dope-smoking soldiers in a combat zone. Who are you going to believe, where does the credibility lay?"

"It's just as likely that Morlock was responsible for all of these (murders)," Stackhouse added.

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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US army apologizes for Afghanistan abuse pictures

© AFP Peter Parks

AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Army on Monday formally apologized "for the distress" caused by pictures portraying abuse allegedly committed by American troops serving in Afghanistan.

"We apologize for the distress these photos cause," said a statement released by the Army.

German weekly Der Spiegel earlier Monday published photos that it said showed two US soldiers in Afghanistan from a rogue army unit posing with dead Afghans.

Two photos, which Spiegel said US authorities had sought to keep secret, appear to show two members of a unit that allegedly killed Afghan civilians for sport.
In one, a purported soldier, cigarette in hand, holds up the head of a blood-spattered man who is apparently dead. In a second, another purported soldier is grinning widely while also holding up the same man.


A third photo shows two bodies propped up against a post. Again the people in the picture appear to be dead.

The Army statement said the actions seen in the pictures were "repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army."

It noted that the actions portrayed in these photographs were under investigation and subject to ongoing US court-martial proceedings.

"These court-martial proceedings speak for themselves," the Army pointed out. "The photos appear in stark contrast to the discipline, professionalism and respect that have characterized our soldiers' performance during nearly 10 years of sustained operations."

The photos relate to an ongoing high-profile case of soldiers accused of killing civilians, mutilating their bodies and collecting trophies.

Spiegel said one of the troops in the photos is Corporal Jeremy Morlock, who faces charges of premeditated murder in the deaths of three Afghans.

The other, Private Andrew Holmes, stands accused of participating in a plot to execute an Afghan man in January, the magazine said.

The plan, supposedly concocted by ringleader Sergeant Calvin Gibbs and Morlock, allegedly involved shooting a civilian and tossing a Russian-made grenade at the man to make it appear he was an enemy combatant.

In November, Holmes won a temporary reprieve from legal action relating to murder charges, according to his lawyer.

Morlock is one of five soldiers charged with murder in the case, while seven others are accused of trying to block the investigation, using hashish and severely beating a comrade in retaliation for informing superiors.

Spiegel said the US military tried to prevent the publication of the pictures, fearing a possible backlash against its troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

The well-respected magazine said it had researched the story of the so-called "Kill Team" for five months.

"Spiegel is publishing only three of the 4,000 pictures and videos, only those which are necessary for the story which needs to be told here," the magazine said.

The Army said it is committed to the Law of War and the humane and respectful treatment of combatants, noncombatants and the dead.

"When allegations of wrongdoing by soldiers surface, to include the inappropriate treatment of the dead, they are fully investigated," the statement said. "Soldiers who commit offenses will be held accountable as appropriate."

© AFP -- Published at Activist Post with license

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