http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-368297,00.html

July 29, 2002

US accused of airstrike cover-up
From Dumeetha Luthra in Kabul
AMERICAN forces may have breached human rights and then removed evidence after the so-called wedding party airstrike that killed more than 50 Afghan civilians this month, according to a draft United Nations report seen by The Times.

A preliminary UN investigation has found no corroboration of American claims that its aircraft were fired on from the ground, and says there were discrepancies in US accounts of what happened.

If the findings are upheld by a second, more detailed, UN investigation, they will cause huge embarrassment to the Pentagon.

UN sources said that the findings pointed to an American cover-up, and suggested that American investigators were dragging their feet hoping that the issue would pass.

The attack took place early on July 1 as American forces hunted pockets of Taleban and al-Qaeda resistance. A US helicopter gunship opened fire on targets around the village of Kakarak, and the casualties included 25 members of one family at a wedding party.

A UN source said that the report was produced by a team of ?experienced and reputable UN people, who have been in the region a while and know it well?. It states that there was clear evidence that human rights violations had taken place and that coalition forces had arrived on the scene very quickly after the airstrikes and ?cleaned the area?, removing evidence of ?shrapnel, bullets and traces of blood?. Women on the scene had their hands tied behind their backs.

Investigators had found no weapons, ?no corroboration? on the ground that the US had been fired on, and that there were discrepancies between the various American accounts of what happened.

In a prepared statement last night a UN spokesman in Afghanistan said that the report contained judgments that were not sufficiently substantiated, and that a comprehensive report was being finalised that would provide a more detailed and accurate picture.

However, the statement added that ?the findings on the ground bear out the paramount necessity that such incidents do not recur, both from a humanitarian and political perspective?.

It called for ?an in-depth investigation (to) be carried out to ensure that such tragedies are not repeated; and that the protection of civilian lives becomes a primary concern in the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan?.

The wedding party raid was not the first US airstrike to kill Afghan civilians and it both angered President Karzai and has fuelled anti-American sentiment in the country.

A joint US-Afghan team is investigating the strike, but nothing has been disclosed and no timescale has been given on when the findings will be made public. One UN official put it: ?The more it drags on, the harder it is to prove and probably the people investigating want it to go slowly and die away.?

Pentagon officials have said that cameras fixed to the AC130?s gun turrets showed gunfire coming from the ground, but the Pentagon has not released the film, as it has on previous occasions, preventing independent analysis of whether it was anti-aircraft artillery or celebratory rifle fire.

The Pentagon declined to comment on the UN report, but said all matters arising from the incident were under consideration by US Central Command and that charges against the servicemen involved had not been ruled out.

But the Pentagon insisted it was too early for the US to draw any conclusions because its investigative team had yet to start compiling its report.
:confused:

If the findings are upheld by a second, more detailed, UN investigation, they will cause huge embarrassment to the Pentagon.
I would hope that if there was/is a coverup it would be more than JUST an embarassment.

THIS is why we need media coverage of military actions. The military is a great gift we have to our freedom/protection, but we cannot allow people who are operating on our behalf get away with murder.

The United Nations denied Tuesday that it is investigating the July 1 U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan that Afghans say killed more than 50 civilians at a wedding party, claiming it has conducted a humanitarian fact-finding mission.

That completed report, the international agency said, has been handed over to U.S. and Afghan government authorities.

"The United Nations was not involved in either an inquiry or an investigation but simply [was] responding to humanitarian needs as it does everywhere in the world in similar situations," the United Nations said in a statement released Tuesday from the U.N. mission in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan added, "The U.N. team went there to see what had happened and also to check if there was any need for humanitarian assistance and in the process gathered the fact-finding information that the villagers shared with them."

Annan also said the team was "asked to clarify some of the judgments and comments" in the initial report.

An article in the Times of London over the weekend leaked details of the U.N. report, indicating the United Nations found no corroboration American military officials' assertion that U.S. aircraft had been fired on from the ground.

The Times' report also suggested an attempt had been made to remove evidence and that "shrapnel, bullets and traces of blood" had been cleared from the area in Uruzgan province.

A U.N. spokesman said Tuesday that the U.N. team members had no ballistics or military expertise, so the team's preliminary conclusions were rejected.

"Our people weren't qualified to do an investigation," said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard.

U.S. officials have denied any cover-up.

"The only shrapnel and bullets and blood samples that have been picked up by U.S. forces were those picked up by ... the fact-finding team," said Col. Roger King, a U.S. command spokesman in Afghanistan.

The U.N. special representative in Afghanistan has decided not to release the full U.N. report, citing the joint U.S.-Afghan investigation already under way.

"I hope the work the U.N. has done will help them move forward with the investigations speedily," Annan said.

www.cnn.com

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-afghan-wedding-attack0801aug01.story?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dnationworld% 2Dheadlines

By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent

August 1, 2002, 1:52 PM EDT


KABUL, Afghanistan -- If the Afghan government asks, the United Nations will join in a human rights investigation into the deadly U.S. air attack on mountain villages that Afghan officials say killed 48 civilians, a U.N. spokesman said Thursday.

A military investigation of the attack already has been conducted and an Afghan general participating in the inquiry said its report could come within days.

Maj. Gen. Shair Mohammed Karimi also said the Afghan side in what is described as a joint U.S.-Afghan investigation has not seen key evidence, such as interviews with the U.S. air crews involved or aircraft videos of the attack. "I didn't insist," he said.

His remarks, in an interview with The Associated Press, made clear that the Afghan Defense Ministry, at least, is prepared to accept whatever conclusions a Pentagon team reaches on the attack, which undermined support for the U.S. military presence.

The air strike, widely called the "wedding party attack" because 25 of the dead were said to be celebrating a marriage, fed a rising wave of resentment and sparked the first anti-American demonstration in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban.

Afghan officials said 48 civilians were killed and 117 wounded when a U.S. Air Force A-130 gunship, armed with cannons and howitzer artillery, pounded a group of villages in Uruzgan province with devastating fire on July 1.

American defense officials later said air crew members believed they were under anti-aircraft fire from the mountainous area. But no anti-aircraft weapons were reported found and no other evidence of anti-aircraft fire has emerged thus far. Villagers said partygoers had been firing off weapons in celebration of the wedding, an Afghan custom.

A joint air-and-ground mission of U.S. and allied forces was hunting for Taliban or al-Qaida holdouts in the rugged area when it carried out the attack.

Earlier this week, details of a preliminary report by a U.N. fact-finding mission to the village of Kakarak were leaked to the Times of London, which said the U.N. staff members suggested that villagers' human rights had been abused by U.S. ground forces entering the area after the attack, and that the U.S. military may have "cleaned up" evidence.

A U.S. command spokesman said the description of possible evidence-tampering sounded like normal evidence-collection activities by U.S. military investigators.

A final U.N. report had been expected to be released. But on Tuesday the U.N. special representative to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, decided instead to hand it over to the U.S. and Afghan investigators, said David Singh, a U.N. spokesman in Kabul.

"For us to release the information separately might be conflicting, and so we have turned it over to the Afghan and American governments," he said.

Singh noted, however, when asked what further role the United Nations might play, that an independent human rights commission for Afghanistan was established in June, with U.N. assistance, and this panel could review complaints of human rights violations, such as the Kakarak case.

"If the Afghan government asks for assistance, we can do that," he said. "But we have to be asked."

Gen. Karimi, adviser to the Afghan chief of staff, questioned the need for U.N. involvement.

"What can you do if you do further investigation?" he asked.

As for the Afghans' role in the current U.S. investigation, Karimi said they had not sought to interrogate U.S. military personnel involved, review transcripts or tapes of such U.S. interviews, or see videotape routinely taken from an AC-130 during an operation -- tape that should show whether the aircraft was under attack.

"The U.S. general did the investigation with his team. It's not part of my job to go with them," Karimi told AP, speaking in English.

The Afghan general also speculated that "enemy" may have been firing on the U.S. aircraft. Asked the basis for thinking that, he acknowledged, "There is no evidence."

Karimi said he understood the U.S. investigative team, headed by Air Force Brig. Gen. Tony Przybyslawski, will return to Washington this weekend, and the report will be issued soon after that.

The U.S. command did not respond immediately to e-mail and telephone inquiries about the Afghan role in the investigation.
Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press