Yesterday we reported that U.S. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales now has a legal team to defend him in the United States against widely published charges that he alone killed the 16 Afghan civilians including 9 children and 3 women in their sleep on March 11, 2012. Later last night we received a report that there has been a coverup by the US government and that more US soldiers may have been involved in the massacre. Today we learned that an investigation team from the Afghan Parliament team says that up to 20 US Troops are implicated in the Panjwai massacre and that more Afghans were killed and wounded. The latest reports indicate that other Afghans were rounded up and killed and bodies burned in this "cold, calculated atrocity."

One surviving family member said: “I don’t want any compensation. I don’t want money. I don’t want a trip to Mecca. I don’t want a house. I want nothing. But what I absolutely want is the punishment of the Americans. This is my demand, my demand, my demand and my demand.”

Not surprisingly, the US media has been in complicity with the coverup. For examples, the Washington Post reported Bales as the lone assassin and quoted Captain Chris Alexander, Bales’ platoon commander, saying he’s “hands down, one of the best soldiers I ever worked with.” And the New York Times dutifully parroted the US military's version that Bales acted alone without any investigative journalism, saying that he was injured twice in the past and cited a report that his military record was exemplary.

According to the article below a group of Afghan parliamentarians believe there is evidence that 15 to 20 US soldiers were involved. Today, the Karzai government has accused the US military of not cooperating with that investigation and Karzai demanded that the servicemen (plural) must be brought to justice. Afghan army head General Sher Mohammad Karimi said US military officials “ignored and blocked” his attempt to investigate the incident. Karimi indicated the US Military would not allow Afghan officials to interrogate Bales who was flown out of the country and placed in the Leavenworth Federal Prison in Kansas. Moreover, in the video below, Rick Rozoff gives reasons to believe that Robert Bales will not receive any trial.

- Les Blough, Editor

Afghan police and residents gather around a van containing the bodies of some of the 9 children, 3 women and 4 civilian men murdered by US Troops in Afghanistan in the shooting. Photograph: I Sameem/EPA

KANDAHAR CITY (PAN): A parliamentary probe team on Thursday said up to 20 American troops were involved in Sunday’s killing of 16 civilians in southern Kandahar province.

The probing delegation includes lawmakers Hamidzai Lali, Abdul Rahim Ayubi, Shakiba Hashimi, Syed Mohammad Akhund and Bismillah Afghanmal, all representing Kandahar province at the Wolesi Jirga and Abdul Latif Padram, a lawmaker from northern Badakhshan province, Mirbat Mangal, Khost province, Muhammad Sarwar Usmani, Farah province.

The team spent two days in the province, interviewing the bereaved families, tribal elders, survivors and collecting evidences at the site in Panjwai district.

Hamizai Lali told Pajhwok Afghan News their investigation showed there were 15 to 20 American soldiers, who executed the brutal killings.

“We closely examined the site of the incident, talked to the families who lost their beloved ones, the injured people and tribal elders,” he said.

He added the attack lasted one hour involving two groups of American soldiers in the middle of the night on Sunday.

 “The villages are one and a half kilometre from the American military base. We are convinced that one soldier cannot kill so many people in two villages within one hour at the same time, and the 16 civilians, most of them children and women, have been killed by the two groups.”

Lali asked the Afghan government, the United Nations and the international community to ensure the perpetrators were punished in Afghanistan.

He expressed his anger that the US soldier, the prime suspect in the shooting, had been flown out of Afghanistan to Kuwait.

He said the people they met had warned if the responsible troops were not punished, they would launch a movement against Afghans who had agreed to foreign troops’ presence in Afghanistan under the first Bonn conference in 2001.

The lawmaker said the Wolesi Jirga would not sit silent until the killers were prosecuted in Afghanistan. "If the international community does not play its role in punishing the perpetrators, the Wolesi Jirga would declare foreign troops as occupying forces, like the Russians," Lali warned.

President Hamid Karzai on Thursday asked the US to pull out all its troops from Afghan villages in response to the killings.

mds/ma

Source: Pajhwok Afghan News