thedrifter
02-19-08, 06:54 AM
Panel frustrated in Marine shooting case
By ESTES THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
Tue Feb 19, 3:49 AM ET
Col. Barton Sloat was frustrated. For weeks he had heard testimony about a Marine special operations company accused of killing Afghan civilians, but still wasn't sure how many had actually died.
Sloat, who with two other senior Marine officers was part of a panel investigating the events, was told that only a few of more than 160 Afghan witnesses told the same story. The little hard evidence collected was either lost or left behind in Afghanistan.
"We're not sure of anything," Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent David Kurre testified.
"That's the most accurate statement I've heard in the court so far," Sloat said.
As early as this week, Sloat and his two colleagues who make up the special Court of Inquiry — a rarely used administrative fact-finding process — could recommend whether two company officers should be charged criminally.
If a senior general agrees, Maj. Fred C. Galvin and Capt. Vincent J. Noble could stand trial on charges that include failure to obey a lawful order and dereliction of duty.
War crimes prosecutions have been made before — 11 U.S. soldiers were convicted and five officers disciplined in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, for example. But the experience of the Court of Inquiry demonstrates the enormous challenge of piecing together a crime scene on the field of battle.
"These cases are murky by definition," said Alex Roland, a military history professor at Duke University. "It's frustrating for everybody. It's frustrating for the court, for the leadership of the military and for the people who are accused."
In the latest case, all agree on a single basic fact: An explosive-packed minivan exploded near the unit's convoy last March 9, as the squad was returning to its base near Jalalabad from a patrol to the Pakistan border.
No one seems sure about much of anything else, including the number of civilians killed. Accounts vary from at least 19 to no more than five. When hearing testimony about the number of injured, court president Col. John O'Rourke told one Afghan doctor to stop reading his records because they were so vague as to be useless.
"Jalalabad CSI wasn't open that day," quipped Galvin's civilian attorney, Mark Waple.
Citing witness accounts, Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission concluded the Marines fired indiscriminately at vehicles and pedestrians in six different locations on a 10-mile stretch of road. Nearly a dozen Marines told the court they heard gunfire after the bombing, calling the unit's fire a disciplined response to a well-planned ambush.
The Marines themselves told different stories about what they heard and saw through the narrow armored windows of their Humvees. They couldn't agree on the exact response of two gunners who fired, including when they fired and for how long. The gunners were not given immunity and declined to testify.
Investigative agents arrived at the scene two months after the incident, and then had only 60 minutes to examine the site. No autopsies were performed because no bodies were recovered. Even shell casings collected from the bomb site — which could have been used to corroborate the Marines' story that their unit took small arms fire from Afghan attackers — were lost.
The Court of Inquiry was given more than 5,000 pages of documents to review and heard hours of classified testimony during sessions not open to the public.
But throughout the hours of open hearings, Sloat and the other court members didn't bother to hide their contempt for what they had to work with.
"The location and the setting and circumstances of the incident are so remote and unfathomable in the best of circumstances that it's virtually impossible to recreate the courtroom standards that we apply domestically to an incident like this," Roland said.
Ellie
By ESTES THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer
Tue Feb 19, 3:49 AM ET
Col. Barton Sloat was frustrated. For weeks he had heard testimony about a Marine special operations company accused of killing Afghan civilians, but still wasn't sure how many had actually died.
Sloat, who with two other senior Marine officers was part of a panel investigating the events, was told that only a few of more than 160 Afghan witnesses told the same story. The little hard evidence collected was either lost or left behind in Afghanistan.
"We're not sure of anything," Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent David Kurre testified.
"That's the most accurate statement I've heard in the court so far," Sloat said.
As early as this week, Sloat and his two colleagues who make up the special Court of Inquiry — a rarely used administrative fact-finding process — could recommend whether two company officers should be charged criminally.
If a senior general agrees, Maj. Fred C. Galvin and Capt. Vincent J. Noble could stand trial on charges that include failure to obey a lawful order and dereliction of duty.
War crimes prosecutions have been made before — 11 U.S. soldiers were convicted and five officers disciplined in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, for example. But the experience of the Court of Inquiry demonstrates the enormous challenge of piecing together a crime scene on the field of battle.
"These cases are murky by definition," said Alex Roland, a military history professor at Duke University. "It's frustrating for everybody. It's frustrating for the court, for the leadership of the military and for the people who are accused."
In the latest case, all agree on a single basic fact: An explosive-packed minivan exploded near the unit's convoy last March 9, as the squad was returning to its base near Jalalabad from a patrol to the Pakistan border.
No one seems sure about much of anything else, including the number of civilians killed. Accounts vary from at least 19 to no more than five. When hearing testimony about the number of injured, court president Col. John O'Rourke told one Afghan doctor to stop reading his records because they were so vague as to be useless.
"Jalalabad CSI wasn't open that day," quipped Galvin's civilian attorney, Mark Waple.
Citing witness accounts, Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission concluded the Marines fired indiscriminately at vehicles and pedestrians in six different locations on a 10-mile stretch of road. Nearly a dozen Marines told the court they heard gunfire after the bombing, calling the unit's fire a disciplined response to a well-planned ambush.
The Marines themselves told different stories about what they heard and saw through the narrow armored windows of their Humvees. They couldn't agree on the exact response of two gunners who fired, including when they fired and for how long. The gunners were not given immunity and declined to testify.
Investigative agents arrived at the scene two months after the incident, and then had only 60 minutes to examine the site. No autopsies were performed because no bodies were recovered. Even shell casings collected from the bomb site — which could have been used to corroborate the Marines' story that their unit took small arms fire from Afghan attackers — were lost.
The Court of Inquiry was given more than 5,000 pages of documents to review and heard hours of classified testimony during sessions not open to the public.
But throughout the hours of open hearings, Sloat and the other court members didn't bother to hide their contempt for what they had to work with.
"The location and the setting and circumstances of the incident are so remote and unfathomable in the best of circumstances that it's virtually impossible to recreate the courtroom standards that we apply domestically to an incident like this," Roland said.
Ellie