Victims testify in Afghan massacre hearing

TACOMA, Washington: An Afghan villager and two of his sons, who survived a night-time shooting rampage in March, testified yesterday that they saw only one US soldier attacking their compound.
Military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, accusing him of killing 16 villagers, mostly women and children, when he ventured out of his remote camp on two revenge-fueled forays over a five-hour period in March.
The shootings in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on an individual US soldier since the Vietnam War and damaged already strained US-Afghan relations.
The US government says a coherent and lucid Bales acted alone and with “chilling premeditation”.
Some villagers told reporters shortly after the attacks that more than one US soldier was involved, but there have been no sworn statements to that effect made publicly.
Early yesterday, three survivors answered questions via video-link from Kandahar Air Field to a hearing at a US Army base in Washington state — the first time Afghan witnesses have testified under oath about what transpired on March 11.
“He shot me right here,” said Haji Mohamed Naim, the father of nine sons in the village of Alkozai, the scene of the first shootings.
Speaking through an interpreter, he said all he could see was a strong light on the head of a soldier who was not more than half a meter (yard) away from him when he started shooting.
Naim said he was awoken in the night by sounds of shots and dogs barking, and then children from the next door house knocked on his door. He then described how an “American” jumped from a wall before confronting him and starting to shoot.
Two of Naim’s sons, who were also in the compound, said they saw only one US soldier on the night in question.
“Yes, I saw him, he came after me, I went to another room,” said Naim’s son Sadiquallah, who said he was 13 or 14 years old. He described how he hid behind a curtain in a storage room with one other child, and was hit in the ear with a bullet, but did not see who fired the shot.
“How many Americans did you see?” one of the prosecution attorneys asked Sadiquallah. “One,” he replied.
His older brother Quadratullah, who said he was 14, was unscathed in the attack, but said he saw a US soldier shooting other children.
“Yes I saw the American,” he answered a government attorney. “I said ‘We are children, we are children’, and he shot one of the kids,” Quadratullah said, through an interpreter.
“We saw only one American,” he added.
At a courtroom at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Bales sat impassively throughout the proceedings, watching the witnesses on a TV screen in front of him.