PDA

View Full Version : Colonel again criticizes Marines in shooting



thedrifter
01-25-08, 08:28 AM
Colonel again criticizes Marines in shooting <br />
Army officer John Nicholson, who said last year he was 'deeply ashamed' that U.S. troops had killed Afghan civilians, testifies that the unit involved...

thedrifter
01-25-08, 08:36 AM
Helped U.S. Win Cold War; Marines Killed His Family
By James Gordon Meek


In yesterday’s New York Daily News, we reported on an extraordinary investigation unfolding at the Marine base at Camp Lejeune, N.C., where two officers are under scrutiny for their roles in the killings of at least 19 Afghan civilians ten months ago. The Marines of Special Operations Command-Company Foxtrot, who are the subject of this rare court of inquiry - the first convened in 51 years - claim they opened fire on the Afghans during a “complex ambush” of their convoy on Highway 1 in Nangarhar province on March 4, 2007.

But Afghan witnesses told a different story this week during a dramatic video link from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, including an ex-CIA ally and a police colonel who testified. A suicide car bomb struck the convoy and may have slightly injured one Marine before the troops opened fire. The Afghan civilians denied testimony by Marines from the convoy that they were involved in attacking the Americans after the bomb blast.

One of those accused by the Marines of attacking them was the driver of a blue Toyota SUV, Pashtun tribal elder Haji Liwani Qumandan, whose elderly father and 12-year old nephew were obliterated by Marine gunfire that turned his truck into swiss cheese. He called it an “absolute lie” when asked about one Brooklyn Marine’s recent testimony that he saw a dead man hanging out of the Toyota near a “Kalashnikov type” rifle.

Qumandan was grilled by lawyers representing the officers under investigation. They tried to get him to admit sympathizing with the Taliban and that he was out buying fertilizer and fuel and on his way to visit a fellow Pashtun tribesman recently released from the U.S. Navy’s Guantanamo Bay, Cuba terrorist prison. But the day’s testimony began with a military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, who told the court she had scrubbed U.S. intelligence databases for Qumandan’s name and didn’t find anything negative. (The military in Afghanistan maintains extensive dossiers on influential and enemy-aiding Pashtun elders in every key district.)

Qumandan also was asked by Marine lawyer Kurt Sanger of New York, who is on the legal team representing the U.S. government in the probe, about his background as a mujahideen commander during the jihad against the Soviets two decades ago. He later admitted to the defense lawyers that he had fought in the 1980s “as a jihadi” with associates of famed mujahideen leader Younis Khalis, who joined the Taliban in 2003.

But here’s the interesting part. Asked by Sanger if he had ever worked with Americans, Qumandan replied, “Yes, I did.”

“I was providing security for Americans in Afghanistan when they were taking pictures, and going back into Pakistan providing them security,” recalled the old mujahid, as he tipped his pokol cap forward over his brow with one hand. A source told me he worked for the CIA two decades ago.

Asked why he doesn’t fight the mostly Christian American military in the current conflict, Qumandan explained that he hates Al Qaeda and the Taliban. He added that Americans believe in God, whereas the Russians “believed in nothing.”

The court also heard from Afghan Police Lt. Col. Ziudin and his brother Nangyli, who was wounded and said the Marine convoy “was shooting at everyone” on the road that day almost a year ago. At the onset of their testimony, we watched as Lt. Col. Ziudin gently placed his paralyzed 15-year-old son in a wheelchair. The boy was wounded by the same bullet as his uncle Nangyli.
January 24, 2008 12:11 PM

Ellie