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US obstructing investigation into Kandahar massacre?

Published time: March 31, 2012 04:03
Edited time: April 11, 2012 06:23
Afghan National Army soldiers keep watch as Afghans gather outside a U.S. base in Panjwai district Kandahar province, March 11, 2012 (Reuters/Ahmad Nadeem)

The defense lawyer for Robert Bales, who is accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians, is blaming the US for blocking his team’s fact-finding mission into the Kandahar incident. He says he can’t interview witnesses and prosecutors won’t cooperate.

John Henry Browne claims US forces in Afghanistan obstructed him and his associates from reaching the injured civilians at a hospital in Kandahar province to interview them about the incident, Reuters reports.

Brown also said that after investigators interviewed the injured, they let them go freely with collecting any contact information, making it virtually impossible to find them. He further charges they are not sharing the data which was obtained from the witnesses with his team. He says Bales' defense has only managed to talk to US soldiers in Afghanistan, but not the actual victims of the attack. 

Browne explains that the military prosecutors who filed the charges against Bales had possibly been unwilling to cooperate because “they are concerned about the strength of their case.”

The lawyer complained of an “almost complete information blackout from the government, which is having a devastating effect on our ability to investigate the charges preferred against our client.”

Browne’s statements raise even more suspicion about whether the US really wants to punish the guilty party to the fullest extent of the law, or if the government is concealing some ugly truth about the Kandahar massacre.

An independent Afghan probe into the killings alleges that up to 20 US soldiers were involved. After analyzing reports from witnesses and survivors, an investigative team sent by President Hamid Karzai firmly stated that “one soldier cannot kill so many people in two villages within one hour at the same time.” These suspicions are shared by President Hamid Karzai, who also said that the delegation “did not receive cooperation from the USA regarding the surrender of the US soldiers to the Afghan government.”

In response to the incident, Karzai demanded a full withdrawal of coalition troops from Afghan settlements, further ordering that they be confined to military bases.

US officials still insist that only one soldier was involved in the shootings. They showed their Afghan counterparts images captured by a surveillance camera on a blimp above the base, which allegedly shows Bales returning after the shooting. But the investigators, for some reason, withheld the surveillance video from Bales’ lawyer.

Robert Bales was originally held in military custody following the incident, only to be hastily evacuated from Afghanistan. The suspected homicidal soldier’s identity was revealed only after he was reported to be en route to a military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

For the time being, Bales will have his psychological condition examined. Officials also say that due to security concerns, Bales is likely to remain at the Fort Leavenworth, and will not be transferred to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center outside Washington, DC. The psychological exam, officially called “board 706,” is par for the course when it comes to such instances of mass murder.

Comments (25)

So 02.04.2012 14:45

The U.S. military has also claimed that they cannot do any investigation on the scene because allegedly the villagers do not let them in (you can find this in the news). This line falls flat--since when the U.S. or the ISAF asks Afghans for any permission and since when it respects their privacy? Yet it also reveals that the U.S. military tried to hide the fact that the villagers have actually been dispersed from their homes--the scene of the atrocity--evidently so that the world would no longer hear from them. So much for the "investigation" which has more and more a character of information blackout with some information/disinfor mation noise as a cover.

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So 02.04.2012 14:28

The lawyer complained of an “almost complete information blackout from the government, which is having a devastating effect on our ability to investigate the charges preferred against our client.”

Se arch on the Internet for the video by Yalda Hakim of Australia’s SBS network--the ONLY journalist visiting the scene and actually managing to talk to some of the witnesses--thanks to the personal intervention of Afghan President Karzai (too bad that RT did not pick on this bombshell story). Yalda Hakim also reveals that the villagers moved from the two villages, which are now unoccupied. Or were they told to move out? She was nevertheless able to trace one family to Kandahar.

The presence of the helicopters during the killing was "explained" by the U.S. military as part of their search for Bales. New changed (dis)information says that, after Bales' supposed second outing from the base (where he was supposed to be on guard duty), the "search team" ran into Bales "within the first meters" just as they tried to leave the base. This then also debunks the cover story for the officially acknowledged presence of air support during the raids by the death squads.

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A.Smith 01.04.2012 02:16

Multiple Villagers have stated multiple US Soliders were involved in the Kandahar Child slaughter and deliberately helped burned their bodys to likely hide evidence of rape.

Multipl e Villagers have stated a squad of US Soldiers came to their village and directly threatened to kill TWENTY VILLAGERS after a IED exploded nearby wounding or killing one of the US Soldiers a mere day earlier.

Mult iple now orphaned CHILDREN of the family's slaughtered have stated multiple US Soldiers were involved in the child slaughter in their village.

The US General in charge of US troops in Afghanistan AND US President Barack Obama have both stated and are on the record of portraying a single US soldier was involved.

Ini tially it was spewed by the US Media the US Soldier confessed. Then suddenly the US Soldier not only has a attorney stating he didn't confess, he states the US Soldier Staff Sgt. Baily doesn't remember what took place.

The cold calculated meticulous slaughter of Afghanistan children and women was deliberate, planned and took hours to carry out. Both the US General and US President Obama are out on the plank if the truth is revealed multiple US Soldiers carried out those attacks.

A heads up reporter directly asked President Obama if this was his Mi Lye massacre referencing a similar horrific US led massacre of women, children in Mi Lye, Vietnam during the Vietnam war. Obama briskly brushed off the question however that question still remains.

The number of purported witness's that were there in that village providing eye witness accounts of multiple US soldiers threatened to murder 20 villagers less than 48 hours before this Kandahar massacre took place over a IED attack clearly indicates a squad wide motive.

The number of purported village witness's on the actual attack indicating multiple US soldiers were directly involved in shooting and burning the bodys cannot be simply brushed aside by some obviously biased US field General in Afghanistan nor a US President who appears to lie to the US public while smiling at the same time.

RT and non-Western media journalists should continue to look into and reveal what actually took place in this Kandahar massacre and who was involved. Where's the Rolling Stone journalists on this?

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