Karzai blasts US troops for gruesome Afghan deaths

[March 30, 2011]  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghanistan's president on Wednesday condemned the actions of a group of U.S. 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 said told thousands of new teachers at a graduation ceremony in the capital Kabul. The president 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 -- Spc. Jeremy Morlock and Pvt. 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 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 Wednesday. But he added that he wanted Americans to know that U.S. soldiers "killed a 15-year-old boy and an old man in front of their families."

During his speech, Karzai for the second time in a week called on the Taliban to avoid attacking schools. He also praised a recent Taliban statement that banned insurgent attacks on schools or students, but stressed he couldn't be sure the message reflected the actual views of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

"I hope this proves that the Taliban are not against education. I hope that even if they are against the government of Afghanistan or against the foreigners or the presence of foreigners, that they are not the enemy of Afghan children."

Karzai has hoped to initiate peace talks with the Taliban, and has made repeated private and public overtures to the insurgent movement, even as he attempts to undercut their popular appeal by publicly highlighting their attacks on civilians. Earlier this month insurgent commander Azizullah Agha announced that he and 20 of his men defected from the Taliban in the southern province of Kandahar because the Taliban were burning schools.

In eastern Afghanistan, NATO said three of its service members were killed by insurgents on Wednesday. No other details about the deaths were released pending notification of their next of kin. Their deaths bring the number of coalition troops killed in Afghanistan this month to 32. So far this year 99 have been killed.

NATO also announced Wednesday the results of its review into a March 26 coalition airstrike in southwestern Afghanistan that inadvertently killed four civilians. The strike targeted a suspected Taliban commander and his associates who NATO believed were traveling in two vehicles in the Nawzad district of Helmand province.

The coalition relied on video surveillance to determine the commander's location, according to a summary of NATO's report provided to reporters. A weapons system video shows two vehicles traveling together with motorcycles riding at the front and rear of the movement, but the Taliban commander was not in either vehicle, NATO concluded.

Three lower ranking Taliban fighters were killed in the first vehicle and four civilians were killed in the second vehicle. Three other civilians were injured in the blast, NATO said, and three children in the vehicles were unharmed.

"This is a deeply regrettable incident and our condolences go out to those affected by this tragedy," said Brig. Gen. Tim Zadalis, joint command director of air plans for the international coalition.

Though the number of civilian casualties attributed to NATO attacks have declined this year, accidental deaths continue to be a source of tension between the international force and the Afghan government.

[Associated Press; By SOLOMON MOORE]

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