Marines lied about attack, driver says

BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Wednesday, January 23rd 2008, 4:00 AM

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. - An Afghan who worked with the CIA two decades ago told a military court Tuesday that a Brooklyn Marine lied about why his special ops unit gunned down unarmed civilians in March 2007.

The Marines claimed they fired in self-defense at attacking insurgents as their convoy sped 12 miles back to base after a harmless roadside bomb blast on March 4.

Only one witness, Marine Staff Sgt. Mohamed Sheik of Brooklyn, has testified he actually saw an enemy with a weapon that day - a dead Afghan slumped in a blue Toyota SUV near a "Kalashnikov-type" rifle.

"Whoever said that, it's not true. This is an absolute lie," the SUV's driver, ex-mujahedeen commander Haji Liwani Qumandan, told a Marine court of inquiry in dramatic testimony beamed in by video from Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

At least 19 Afghan civilians died in the Marines' rolling shooting spree up Highway 1 in Nangarhar province, including Qumandan's elderly father and 12-year old nephew in his truck.

"I swear to Allah and on the Koran not to lie to you," said Qumandan, who a source said worked with the CIA in the 1980s while fighting Soviet military occupiers. "We did not attack the convoy."

The court of inquiry is the first by Marines in 51 years and could lead to criminal charges against two commanders or others in the convoy.

Lawyers for Maj. Fred Galvin and Capt. Vincent Noble tried to link Qumandan to the Taliban. But an intelligence officer in Afghanistan testified that Qumandan's name was cleared in a computer check of the entire U.S. intelligence community.

jmeek@nydailynews.com

Ellie