A defense witness said damage to a vehicle confirmed the version of events of a group of US Marines who said they were ambushed before they allegedly fired into a group of Afghan civilians, killing as many as 19 people.
Damage to the turret and windshield of a Marine Humvee involved in a March 4 shooting and suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan is evidence that someone fired at the vehicle, Army Sergeant 1st Class Jason Mero told a special Court of Inquiry.
Divots on the windshield, holes in a headlight and a nick on the turret all indicated that someone fired at the vehicle, he said.
The defense witness was the first to corroborate the version of events from Marines in Fox Company, who said they were fired at after a suicide bomber detonated a white van packed with explosives. Some witnesses have said they did not see anyone shooting at the six-vehicle convoy.
As many as 19 civilians were killed, according to an Army investigation, but attorneys for two Marine officers involved in the incident argue the death toll was lower.
"I am 90 percent sure that was caused by small arms fire," Mero testified about damage to a headlight. He said the headlight would have been shattered, not merely damaged, if the blast were the culprit.
A nick on the turret that protects the machine gunner had a piece of plastic lining extended to the inside, showing the bullet that made the nick was fired from outside the convoy, Mero said.
"It was possible the bullet just missed the gunner," he said.
Marks on the thick windshield glass also were too close to each other to be caused by shrapnel from the blast, he said.
Mero said he refused to change his theory of the events, even though an Air Force colonel assigned to investigate the incident pressured him to do so.
The car bomb was made from fertilizer and fuel oil and detonated by a Chinese or Russian mortar shell, he said.
Much of the day was spent in closed, classified session. An earlier witness who testified in an open session was a senior sergeant in the company who said the unit had to deal with tensions from others in the military.
"My personal gut feeling is they really didn't want us to do well," testified retired Master Sergeant Jim Elder.
Elder said the company arrived at Jalalabad airfield in February last year and was assigned to a base camp that was not ready for use. He said it had no bunks, no fuel supply for generators, no food service and had fecal matter in the drinking water.
When Marine units deployed to Iraq, "all these things were taken for granted" because there was good support, he said.
Once the hearing is completed, the panel of senior officers will write a report recommending whether the two men be charged with a crime. The panel has been at work three weeks and is expected to end next week.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS