POLITICS: Afghan Official Says U.S. Raiders Hid Killings

[Mari333]

WASHINGTON, Apr 7, 2010 (IPS) - The head of the Afghan Ministry of Interior investigation said publicly for the first time his investigators had accepted the testimony of family members of the victims of the Feb. 12 raid by U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) that the U.S. troops had dug bullets out of the bodies of their victims in an apparent effort to cover up the killings and that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal had agreed with the team's conclusions.

Mirza Mohammad Yarmand, head of the criminal investigation department in the ministry, told IPS in an interview Wednesday that the ministry's investigation had found "evidence of tampering at the scene by the patrol members", which had "confused" NATO investigators about the incident.

"We accepted the claim of the family members that NATO soldiers had dug the bullets out of the bodies," said Yarmand, "but we could not confirm it, because we were not able to do an autopsy on the bodies." The family members, like most Afghans, had not allowed the autopsies on the victims, he explained.












http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50944

[Echo In Light]

1. k/r

[Swamp Rat]

2. Winning hearts and minds

by digging them out of dead civilians

[tekisui]

3. knr. The Administration or Congress need to get involved.

[Mari333]

4. k