US military investigates killing of two Afghans close to Iran border
(AP)
19 February 2005
KABUL - The US military is investigating why American troops fatally shot two civilians outside a base near Afghanistan’s western border with Iran, officials said Saturday.
US troops opened fire on the two unarmed men after they entered an exclusion zone around the base on Feb. 11 near Shindand Air Base in Herat province, said a spokesman for the provincial government.
“Regrettably, two local nationals were killed, and we’re investigating the situation right now,” said Maj. Steve Wollman, a spokesman for the US military.
The two families of the victims’ had received 100,000 Afghanis (US$2,300) each in a “payment of condolence, but that’s not an admission of guilt or wrongdoing,” he said.
Wollman gave no details of the incident, but provincial government spokesman Mohammedullah Afzali identified the two men as Naib and Rasul from the nearby village of Moghelan.
He said the two had apparently entered the area close to the base looking for wood or scrap metal to sell in the local market and had tried to run away when challenged by a group of American soldiers. The soldiers then opened fire.
“The fact is that these people were in the area near the airport where locals are not allowed,” Afzali said. “It was a mistake by those two people and at the same time a misunderstanding by the Americans.”
He said the provincial governor has visited the two families last week to express his sympathy and had also given them US$500 each.
US and Afghan forces have been stationed at the old Soviet-built air base in Shindand, about 580 kilometers (360 miles) west of Kabul, since bloody factional fighting last August resulted in the ouster of regional strongman Ismail Khan as governor.
Wollman said US troops embedded as trainers with Afghan army units as well as American military police were at Shindand. He said he didn’t know if there were any US special forces there.
The American military is already investigating the deaths of several Afghans in custody as well as allegations of abuse brought by former detainees similar to those made against US forces in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Afghan officials have warned that such cases will play into the hands of insurgents and undermine American efforts to win over ordinary Afghans.
US Army documents released on Friday showed that pictures of US soldiers in Afghanistan posing with hooded and bound detainees during mock executions were destroyed after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq to avoid another public outrage.
The Army documents also describe a probe into complaints by senior psychological operations officers in Afghanistan that they saw assaults by special forces on civilians during raids in May 2004 in two villages near Kabul.
That investigation was suspended because the victims could not be interviewed and prospective witnesses were enemy forces, the Army said in its documents.
Wollman referred questions about the alleged assaults to the US Department of Defence in Washington.
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