Afghanistan: US ‘kill team’ horror

Raul Connolly
March 26, 2011
Issue 
874
World

“Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of ‘trophy’ photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed”, said the March 21 British Guardian.

The photos, compared by officials in NATO’s occupying forces to the infamous Abu Ghraib pictures depicting US soldiers torturing Iraqis, were published by German newspaper Der Spiegel.

The Guardian said the photos showed the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year.

Twelve US soldiers are on trial in the US over the murders. Five are charged with premeditated murder. The Guardian said “they staged killings to make it look like they were defending themselves from Taliban attacks”.

The soldiers are accused of mutilating the corpses. It has been revealed the soldiers cut “trophies” from the bodies of their victims.

IBTimes said on March 24 that one of the US soldiers, Jeremy Morlock, was sentenced to 24 years in prison, with the opportunity for parole within seven years, after he struck a plea deal to testify against other members of the “kill squad”.

Imperialism & war
Afghanistan

Comments

Anonymous replied on

Yep, criminal soldiers getting punished. Now what about the taliban killings? Where's your report on that?

Anonymous replied on

It really is a tragedy that this has happened; but it's important to not that at least America has prosecuted these nutters to the full extent of the law, rather than trying to stick up for them. It's a shame every single one of your articles is so extremely biased; the West isn't the sole propagator of atrocities in the world you know. The taliban and militant groups such as Hamas are a million times worse because they have a culture of performing these acts against anyone who does not subscribe to their religion. US soldiers are not evil, acts such as this are in the cast minority, unfortunately there are inevitably going to be a small group of sadists in amongst such a large body of people.

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