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WaPo Continues Investigation Into Allegations

Oct-27-2010 » Filed Under: 5/2 SBCT

Stryker unit sought to defend killing at heart of Afghan murder probe - The Washington Post

Three days after they killed an Afghan cleric named Mullah Adahdad, members of a U.S. Army platoon returned to his village. Tribal elders had complained to Army officers that the cleric had been unarmed and that the May 2 shooting was a setup. The soldiers tried to convince them otherwise.

"This guy was shot because he took an aggressive action against coalition forces," 1st Lt. Stefan Moye, the platoon leader, explained to village residents in Qualaday, in Kandahar province."We didn't just [expletive] come over here and just shoot him randomly. And we don't do that."

In fact, Army charging documents now allege, that's exactly what soldiers in the platoon did - in perhaps the gravest war crime charges to emerge from the nine-year Afghan conflict. According to the documents, the cleric's death culminated a months-long conspiracy in which members of a unit of the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division randomly targeted and killed three unarmed Afghan men, dismembered corpses and posed for grisly photographs with their victims.


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