More than a year ago, a horrifying war-crime massacre was committed by at least one American soldier stationed in the Zangabad area of Panjwai district, Kandahar province, Afghanistan. Seven months ago (or eight months later), the U.S. Army held a pre-trial “Article 32” hearing, in accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), at a military base in Washington state, to assess the evidence against SSG Robert Bales, who was taken into custody on March 11, 2012 and charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder on March 23, 2012. That November, 2012 hearing took sworn testimony from other American soldiers, and from Afghan survivors. The media was allowed to cover the hearing – but not to film it, or record the audio – in an overflow room of the small military courtroom. There, over seven straight days, they saw Americans testify in person, and then, late at night, Pacific time, watched 11 Afghan survivors, 2 Afghan National Army guards, and 1 Afghan Uniform National Police investigator testify by video link from an Army base in Kandahar city.

The official transcript of that pivotal Army Article 32 hearing, however, remains secret – concealed from the public and the press. Thus, the only sworn testimony of Afghan survivors and witnesses, describing what happened that night, exists in the snippets of testimony that the handful of reporters present managed to capture and preserve for the public record, during the three late nights of Afghan testimony heard at the conclusion of seven days of attack testimony. Also concealed from the public is the subsequent report by the investigating officer, based upon the evidence produced at the hearing (including four days of testimony by American soldiers), that formally recommended to the Army that SSG Bales be referred for a court-martial trial (advice that the Army commander implemented in late December, 2012).

The U.S. Army has similarly concealed the names of all of the children listed on their two Charge Sheets for SSG Bales – March 23, 2012 Charge Sheet; June 1, 2012 Charge Sheet – and thus the identities of the victims behind the numbers remained a secret until January 17, 2013, when Gene Johnson of the Associated Press obtained the full list of Charge Sheet victim names from defense attorneys for the accused. (The names of the adult victims on the current Army Charge Sheet were only pried out of the Army by the media in November, 2012.) The AP’s January list confirmed that the only existing, semi-official (Afghan-sourced) public list of massacre victims’ names was not the same as the June 1, 2012 Army Charge Sheet. The AP’s list of victims also publicly confirmed for the first time that there are not “nine children” listed among the dead on the current Army Charge Sheet, as has been – and continues to be – unquestioningly accepted, and repeated as fact by members of the media, since President Karzai and U.S. military spokesmen first made unsupported statements to that effect soon after the massacre. Yet such unexplained discrepancies, like all the many other disturbing discrepancies in the U.S. government’s version of this story (for particulars, see my repeatedly-updated July, 2012 post and its maps, in addition to the reporting below), remain unmentioned and uninvestigated by our Free Press (whose reporting is largely responsible for the obvious existence of those discrepancies), and by our representatives in the House and Senate. (While Panjwai Massacre victims still living in the war zone that is Zangabad, like Haji Mohammad Naim – who’s had one son killed since the massacre by a NATO airstrike, and another arrested – now plead for help and justice from “human rights organizations” – see subtitled June 5 video below.)

Congress, to the best of my knowledge, has convened not a single public hearing to examine what happened that night, during the commission of the worst American war crime in decades. Significant monetary compensation from U.S. taxpayers, however, was hurriedly issued by the Department of Defense (or the CIA) to the subsistence farmers affected, the day after Bales was charged – before Army investigators had even made it to the scenes of the crime to investigate.

And today, June 5, 2013, his lawyers announced a week ago, SSG Bales will be pleading guilty, effectively as charged (thus, to 16 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted murder), in order to avoid the death penalty – and, evidently, so that the Army can avoid having its evidence tested at trial.

Bales guilty plea: Victims’ reactions, from 2470media on Vimeo. Click on image to play June 5, 2013 video.

June 23rd UPDATE: As blogged by Hal Bernton of the Seattle Times June 5, “During the hearing [Wednes]day, [SSG] Bales did not offer an apology to his victims,” but he did plead guilty, as expected, to all but one of the counts charged to him on June 1, 2012. The one count to which Bales did not plead guilty was an alleged violation of Article 134 of the UCMJ – Charge IV, Specification 1 – which stated that Bales did “wrongfully endeavor to impede an investigation . . . by damaging a laptop computer.” Here’s how Gene Johnson of the Associated Press reported the sworn testimony of U.S. Army Sgt. Ross O’Rourke, in that regard, during November’s Article 32 hearing:

But Bales also deliberately mangled his laptop, said two soldiers assigned to guard him as he gathered his things.

One of them, Sgt. Ross O’Rourke, testified that he removed the laptop from Bales’ rucksack after the defendant told him he didn’t want to take it with him. O’Rourke said Bales then grabbed the computer and folded the screen back, breaking it.

That didn’t damage the hard drive, O’Rourke said, and investigators still could have retrieved information from the computer. O’Rourke didn’t testify about what information might have been uncovered.

On Monday, Cpl. David Godwin testified that Bales asked him to bleach his blood-soaked clothes.

And here’s how Adam Ashton of The News Tribune blog described the pertinent Article 32 testimony of U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class James Stillwell:

Two soldiers who guarded him that day said they gave Bales the benefit of the doubt when he told them he wanted to retrieve his laptop while he awaited a helicopter flight out of Belambay. Bales told them he wanted to make sure it wouldn’t get destroyed, [SFC James] Stillwell remembered.

Stillwell lifted it out of a rucksack containing Bales’ clothes and left it for the captive staff sergeant. Bales promptly snapped it, Stillwell testified today.

At the conclusion of the June 5 plea hearing, a press conference was held by defense attorneys, including the military defense counsel for SSG Bales. Hal Bernton attended the news conference, and reported as follows on his Seattle Times blog:

[Defense co-counsel Army Maj. Greg] Malson said that “what [Bales] wants more than anything” is for Afghans to understand that other soldiers now on the ground in Afghanistan had nothing to do with what happened in those two villages.

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I linked above (as an example of “nine children” reporting) to a June 2nd Guardian article by Emma Graham-Harrison and Afghan reporter Mokhtar Amiri, on the Bales plea deal and reactions to it. Notably, this pair of reporters is responsible for one of the Panjwai Massacre’s multiple, never-explained March, 2012 ‘ghost’ victim/witness articles. Meaning reporting about a victim – in this case, the wounded “father” of 26-year-old “Muhammad Zahir” from “just south” of COP Belamby, about whom the Associated Press also reported – who we now know was not charged to SSG Bales.

Remarkably, this same Guardian pair may have just repeated that feat in their June 2, 2013 article – again without explanation, or apparently any recognition of, or appreciation for, the import of and public interest in what they, or at least Mokhtar Amiri, have reported. Specifically, Afghan journalist Amiri (I assume) reportedly had a conversation, within the last month, with an “eyewitness” to the Panjwai Massacre named “Haji Satar Khan” – no village or location mentioned by the Guardian – whose existence is news to me, and whose “eyewitness” account of the massacre has never been publicly heard in English-language reporting, as far as I know. Furthermore, Amiri (or Graham-Harrison) spoke within the last month to “Abdul Halim Noorzai, a former mujahideen commander from Panjwai district,” who told the Guardian that “[t]wo of his family members were injured in the attack” – again, however, no names, no ages, no village, no location for those victims is mentioned. Noorzai may well be a (close or distant) relative of two of the six Panjwai wounded charged to Bales (all of whom are from one Alkozai neighborhood). For example, Noorzai could be, and I believe would have to be, a relative of the unnamed and uninterviewed wife of wounded Haji Mohammad Naim of Alkozai, and thus of her two wounded children (Parmina and Sadiqullah) – but there’s no way to tell if that’s the case from the Guardian’s reporting. And unless “Haji Satar Khan” is not in fact an “eyewitness,” his unheard account of what he saw that night ought to be considered worthy of recounting by any journalist, given the paucity of massacre accounts by adult eyewitnesses available in English.

Meanwhile, to tout the “local uprising” in the Zangabad region – AFP; embedded NYT; AAN; embedded CBS; embedded LATimes; embedded NPR – in late May this year U.S. Army special forces hosted an embedded CBS News reporter inside Camp Belamby itself – the first visit, to my knowledge, of any U.S. reporter to Camp Belamby (or massacre homes), period, since before the massacre. During her Army-arranged tour, London-based reporter Elizabeth Palmer visited and filmed (screen captures: 1, 2, 3, 4) what may well be Haji Mohammad Naim’s former Alkozai home – now being used as an Afghan Local Police (ALP) post (Palmer doesn’t mention it, but Haji Naim told Mamoon Durrani June 5 that he’s relocated his family to another village, and has himself refused to join the ALP). There, Palmer spoke off-camera to, and filmed on-camera, an unnamed massacre survivor – apparently a witness to his unnamed Alkozai father (perhaps Naim, or one of the two adult male neighbors of Naim who were killed) being “mowed down” – who has joined the ALP. Palmer too assures us, in her one-sided, Army-directed CBS Evening News report, four full months after the Associated Press demonstrated otherwise, that the deaths of “nine children” were charged to SSG Bales.

In lieu of compiling a list of the many unanswered questions that SSG Bales should be, but probably will not be [and, as it turned out, in fact was not], required to answer as part of his plea deal, the rest of this post is my (reporting-derived) version of a public transcript of November’s Article 32 hearing testimony by Afghan survivors – now unable to travel to the U.S. to testify in person at a future court-martial for SSG Bales – as they answered questions about what was done to them in our name. [Unanswered questions like why SSG Robert Bales – while under guard waiting to be airlifted out of COP Belamby – said to a fellow soldier, with regard to the number of people he thought had been killed: “My count is 22” (according to U.S. Army SGT Jason McLaughlin’s sworn testimony). Another reporter in attendance heard (and tweeted) either the prosecutor’s opening argument or actual testimony stating that Bales told a fellow soldier (presumably McLaughlin): “he thought he killed 20 people.” (Including the ‘ghost’ victims in media reports – see the excerpts immediately following the casualty box in the July post – I count descriptions of 29 separate deaths in the Panjwai Massacre.)] As with the high-profile Bradley Manning court-martial now underway in Maryland, this effort to create a partial substitute for the official transcript is made necessary because the military is being allowed to close the doors of the UCMJ-governed military justice system, in all but name, by withholding essential court documents from the press and public.

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On January 19, 2014, at Storify.com – as introduced here (this link’s also at the top of the sidebar) – I posted a “partial substitute” for the August, 2013 Bales sentencing hearing transcript, as well. That hearing relayed, for the first time, 32 pages of uncontested facts about the massacre, including, as recorded by reporters who were present, the following undisputed stipulated facts:

• He called Afghans “muzzis,” said soldiers could cover up anything they did in Afghanistan

• Jury hears #Bales told fellow soldiers under his command not to worry about actions in Afghanistan b/c they could “always cover up” actions

• A fellow soldier had a limb blown off. [] #Bales wasn’t there and wasn’t a friend.

• After the attack, Sgt Bales told colleagues: “[] My count is 20,” referring to the number of Afghans he believed he had killed.

• After returning to Afghan base from his killings, Sgt #Bales said, “My count is 20.” And “we shouldn’t worry about collateral consequences.”

• #Bales to soldiers: [] “My count was 20,” referring to number of people killed.

• [] #Bales told soldiers “My count was 20” referring to victims he killed #jblm

• #Bales “[] My count is 20. That MFer with the PKM won’t bother us anymore.”

• #Bales asked a fellow soldier to help him destroy evidence after massacre while being held. He didn’t. Bales did destroy a computer #jblm

• [] #Bales destroyed his laptop to get rid of evidence

• #Bales stomped on his laptop. [] Bales knew it had porn & video of casualties. []

Then, in unsworn answers to his attorney later in the hearing, SSG Bales finally apologized – apparently mostly to his “Patriot Brotherhood” (as tweeted by reporters who were present):

• More #Bales: “I love the army. I’ve stood next to some really good guys, some real heroes. I can’t say I’m sorry to those guys enough.”

• #Bales choked up esp when apologizing to soldiers: I love the Army …I can’t say I’m sorry to those guys enough. #Afghanistan

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I believe the long collection of excerpted testimony reports below – supplemented by the few English-language media interviews of survivors that exist – speaks for itself. I’ll only add this sampling of Article 32 testimony by American soldiers at Camp Belamby (testimony that’s not otherwise included in this post, but may be in future, depending on what develops today). This relates to the alleged movements of SSG Bales that night, according to American and Afghan witnesses, in connection with the murders both north of the base, and at the Wazir and Dawood homes south of Camp Belamby:

[Bales defense attorney Emma] Scanlan said the timeline laid out by prosecutors also raises questions, beginning with the Afghan guard who testified that he checked his watch, and was certain that the U.S. soldier he saw — returning from the initial killings in Alkozai, prosecutors allege — had returned to Camp Belambay at 1:30 a.m.

The shots heard from the direction of Alkozai didn’t stop till 1:50 a.m., the defense attorney said [apparently quoting Article 32 testimony that didn’t otherwise make it into the media with such specificity -pow wow].

“I don’t know what that means,” Scanlan said. “But one thing it means is, if you believe what the government is telling you, that Sgt. Bales is the one who came back through that wire at 1:30, then somebody else was firing for another 20 minutes.” – Kim Murphy, The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 14, 2012

Emma Scanlan was similarly quoted by Hal Bernton of the Seattle Times on November 13, 2012 (in a hearing/closings summary article that, in introducing this statement, seems to confuse or merge testimony by U.S. soldiers with testimony by an Afghan soldier):

“We need to know why there are shots fired after they say Sgt. Bales returned to the base.”
– Bales defense attorney Emma Scanlan, Nov. 13, 2012

More on the timing from a Najiban woman interviewed on March 11, 2012 about the Wazir home murders, but never again since (a neighbor, and possibly a relative, whose name may be either “Gul Bashra” or “Anar Gul”) – she was already awake when the attack began:

“It was 2:00 in the morning [she holds up two fingers, apparently to represent the time -pw]. I woke up for my fasting breakfast. When I turned the light on, I heard noises. I told my son [looks at and gestures toward him on the other side of the minivan -pw] not to speak because the Americans are here. They were telling us to be quiet, and not to come out. When he kicked the door, my door had a stone so it didn’t open. They moved from my door, and went next door and the first thing they did was to shoot the dog, and then there was a muffled bang inside the room – but who could go and see. And then there were two planes overhead.” – The BBC, March 11, 2012

I’ve now (as of June 13th) compiled some of the American and Afghan soldier Article 32 hearing testimony, as reported, into a timeline, along with media accounts from Afghan villagers (the sworn Article 32 testimony entries are bolded, the unsworn media accounts are not):

TIMELINE

Of the 11 Afghan family members who testified at the Article 32 hearing, the prosecution apparently called nine (all male), and the defense two (both young girls, one of whom was the only survivor called to testify about the deaths of Haji Nazar Mohammad and his two-year-old daughter Tora/Gulalai). The lone adult eyewitness present during the attack who was called to testify was Haji Mohammad Naim of Alkozai (Naim was shot three times at close range, and lost consciousness for four days). Apparently Leona Mansapit – the U.S. Army investigator who had interviewed Massouma, eyewitness widow of Mohammad Dawood – was a defense witness too; Mansapit was called to testify (on November 10-11) about what Massouma had privately told Mansapit in June, 2012. (See the foot of the post for Massouma’s accounts.) “The prosecution says that 17 Afghans have said they are willing to testify via video,” Ernesto Londono of The Washington Post wrote during the early portion of the Article 32 hearing, when Americans were testifying. Of the 14 Afghans (including two Army soldiers and a police investigator) who in fact testified by video link later that week, I’ve never seen English-language media interviews of Faizullah or Quadratullah from Alkozai, or of Khamal Adin about the Najiban scene he sorted through, or of Major Khudai Dad about the Afghan police investigation. Most of the other Afghans who testified have been interviewed very rarely by English-language reporters – only once or twice each, in general, as documented below. And, as noted at the beginning of my July, 2012 post, multiple (often key female) eyewitnesses have never been heard from at all (in the media or in the Article 32 hearing), including the eyewitness widow of Haji Nazar Mohammad of Alkozai.

This is the order in which the Afghans appear to have given their testimony in November (I followed a different order below):

Fri-Sat PT, Nov. 9-10, 2012

ANA soldier Naimatullah (12:00-2:00 AM Camp Belamby guard shift 3/11)
ANA soldier Tosh Ali (2:00-4:00 AM Camp Belamby guard shift 3/11, relieving Naimatullah)

Khamal Adin – (Najiban); Mohammad Wazir cousin
Faizullah – (Alkozai); Mohammad Naim son
Sadiqullah – Alkozai; Mohammad Naim son
Quadratullah – Alkozai; Mohammad Naim son
Mohammad Naim – Alkozai

Sat-Sun PT, Nov. 10-11, 2012

Samiullah – (Alkozai); Sayed Jan son
Zardana – Alkozai; Sayed Jan granddaughter
Rafiullah – Alkozai; Sayed Jan grandson
Robina – Alkozai; Nazar Mohammad daughter
Hekmatullah “Khan” Gul – South of Belamby; Mohammad Dawood son
Mullah Baraan – (South of Belamby); Mohammad Dawood brother

Sun-Mon PT, Nov. 11-12, 2012

Major Khudai Dad/Khudaydad,
Chief of Criminal Techniques,
Afghan Uniform Police

Rare map made possible by Afghan reporter Mamoon Durrani‘s invaluable on-site Zangabad research. Superimposed graphic design by Lela Ahmadzai of 2470Media. Click for larger version. *The identities of the victims listed on the still-redacted June 1, 2012 Army Charge Sheet are only known because of a January 17, 2013 Associated Press report that named them.

________________________________________________________________

ALKOZAI
(Ibrahim Khan Houses & Mosque)

(About 0.60 kilometer north of Camp Belamby; 4 killed; 7 wounded) ________________________________________________________________

Before I begin quoting the Article 32 reporting about Rafiullah’s testimony (which is quite abbreviated and confusing), this is my summary – based on a careful transcription of the translation of a lengthy interview of Rafiullah conducted in Kabul in October, 2012 (the month before the sworn Article 32 testimony quoted below was given) – of much of what Rafiullah said he experienced that night, first in his own home, and then in the home of his neighbor to the east, Haji Mohammad Naim, during the attack at the Ibrahim Khan Houses neighborhood of Alkozai village (north of COP Belamby):

Rafiullah is the grandson of farmer or “gardener” Haji Sayed Jan and his wife Nikmarghah – who’d raised him since he was one month old. Rafiullah’s grandmother Khalida (aka Nikmarghah, the wife of Sayed Jan) was shot and killed on March 11 while trying to protect her grandchildren from an American soldier – first in her own home, and then in the home of her neighbor Haji Mohammad Naim, where she and her family had fled. Rafiullah first awoke that night when a bare-headed American soldier (wearing no helmet) kicked open the door of the room in which he, his younger sister and grandmother were sleeping, in the home of his grandfather Haji Sayed Jan, and his grandmother began to scream. Upon awaking, Rafiullah saw the soldier standing in the doorway and heard his grandmother’s screams. Rafiullah too began to scream. The soldier beckoned them outside, while saying something Rafiullah did not understand. His sister Zardana ran ahead, and his grandmother and Rafiullah soon followed, first to an unused or damaged area of their home where they kept animals, and then east to the nearby home of their neighbor Haji Mohammad Naim. Left behind in a guest room of the Sayed Jan home was farm laborer Khudaydad (a cousin of Rafiullah’s father Samiullah), who was killed sometime during the attack (possibly while running to help in response to their screams, based on an April, 2013 Associated Press interview of Zardana – her first media interview). The family cow followed them part way to Haji Mohammad Naim’s home next door, and at some point was shot but not killed. The three fled to the middle room of three in an area of the home of Haji Mohammad Naim (next to the room of Naim and his wife) where Naim’s son Sadiqullah and daughter Parmina were present, and Rafiullah lit the lantern and warned them that “an American guy is here.” At least two family members of Haji Nazar Mohammad (two young daughters, neither of whom testified, or have ever been interviewed) apparently also ran to that room from their home (on the east side of the Naim residence) during the 30-minute attack, before a soldier entered and started shooting. The seven in that room at Haji Naim’s when the shooting began, according to Rafiullah, were Zulheja and her sister “Rubbinah”/”Robina” (both young daughters of Haji Nazar Mohammad, from a home that shared the east wall – with a connecting door – of Haji Naim’s); Rafiullah, Zardana, and Nikmarghah (from a detached home on the west side of Haji Naim’s); and Haji Naim’s son Sadiqullah and daughter Parmina. The soldier shot Rafiullah in both legs with a pistol (a single bullet hit him in the left thigh – possibly after he’d jumped under a bed – ricocheted off the wall, and then hit him in the right thigh), causing Rafiullah to lose consciousness, and his 7-year-old sister Zardana was shot in the head and critically wounded. Rafiullah stated that, of the seven people present in that room when a soldier started shooting, Zulheja was the only one who was not injured – and yet her name (but not those of her sisters) appears on Al Jazeera’s unsourced March, 2012 list of Panjwai wounded. Rafiullah repeatedly stated during the October interview that on his way from Haji Sayed Jan’s home to Haji Mohammad Naim’s home with a soldier behind him (that is, while running between the high walls of the neighboring “compounds”), he “saw many lights in the garden” at different levels, and “heard footsteps,” indicating the presence of other soldiers. (The first media interview of Zardana, by the Associated Press in April, 2013, appears to corroborate this account by her brother.) Rafiullah’s parents (his father Samiullah and mother, whose name is unknown to me) were then (as Rafiullah is now) residing in Kandahar city with his older brother and younger sister Zardana – who was on a brief visit to the home of her grandparents in Alkozai on the night of the attack. Rafiullah’s grandfather Haji Sayed Jan was away from home that night because he was delivering firewood to heat Rafiullah’s father’s Kandahar city home. (See also 2470media’s important, English/German-subtitled October, 2012 video interview of Rafiullah.)

The reports of November, 2012 testimony given – under oath – by Afghan witnesses and survivors of the attack – as recorded by members of the media in attendance during the Bales Article 32 hearing (who struggled to hear the translated testimony, conveyed via late-night video link from Afghanistan to a military courtroom) – are collected and enclosed in gray boxes below. Normal background is used for other, non-Article 32 reporting. [Underlining/emphasis is mine.]

RAFIULLAH – grandson of Haji Sayed Jan & Nikmarghah, who raised him; son of Samiullah and wife

Rafiullah’s first interview in the English-language media, by Jon Stephenson of McClatchy, was published May 16, 2012 (with an important accompanying graphic; Stephenson’s graphic, however, is evidently inaccurate in certain key respects, based on both the lengthy Rafiullah interview summarized above, and the quoted Article 32 testimony – as is his article’s opening description of how Rafiullah awoke that night):

Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2012

By Jon Stephenson | McClatchy Newspapers

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It was early in the morning, perhaps 2 a.m., when gunfire awoke 14-year-old Rafiullah.

He looked outside the house he’d been sleeping in with his grandmother, an aunt, two cousins and his sister, and he saw a man with a weapon walk to a shed that housed the family cow and open fire, shooting the animal dead.

“I told the women inside our room: ‘Let’s run! Let’s get out of here,'” recalled Rafiullah, who like many Afghans goes by only one name. In the next compound, a short distance from the house where Rafiullah had been sleeping, Haji Mohammad Naim awoke to the sound of dogs barking wildly in the street.

[…]

How valuable Naim’s and Rafiullah’s testimony would be in a U.S. military court is unclear. Both said they didn’t see the shooter’s face clearly enough to identify him, and both are uncertain about the exact time, noting that no one in the houses had a watch. Officials haven’t divulged which village they think was attacked first.

[…] Before the shooting ended in Alkozai, Rafiullah’s grandmother [Nikmarghah -pw] was dead, his sister [Zardana -pw] was critically wounded, three other people had been killed and five others were wounded in three adjacent houses. Most of the victims were related by blood or marriage.

[…]

Terror unfolded in the crowded space [at the Haji Naim home -pw], the frightened faces of women and children illuminated only by a light that Rafiullah said appeared to be affixed to an assault rifle. The shooter drove everyone before him, herding and hunting his victims like animals.

Spotting Rafiullah, he seized one of the boy’s arms. Rafiullah said his grandmother seized his other arm, to try to stop the soldier from dragging him away. The soldier turned on her.

“He shot my grandmother, he wounded my sister Zardana and wounded me,” Rafiullah said. “He opened fire on Naim’s son, Sadiqullah, and also opened fire on Naim’s daughter. Then the soldier left.”

Help for the wounded eventually arrived, although Rafiullah – like Naim – had fallen unconscious, and was unable later to say how long it took to get there. The survivors were rushed, by a relative who’d borrowed a car, to a nearby U.S.-Afghan base [FOB Zangabad -pw], then flown by helicopter to a U.S. military hospital at Kandahar airfield.

Rafiullah, who had a gunshot wound to each leg, found himself in a bed next to Naim’s son, Sadiqullah, who’d received a bullet wound to his right earlobe.

Rafiullah told McClatchy that Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, phoned him in the aftermath of the attack and U.S. authorities later interviewed him while he was in the hospital. “Two times they talked to me,” he said.

A day or two after the massacre, he also spoke to the man Karzai had appointed as his chief investigator into the killings, Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi, the Afghan army chief .

“To all of them I said the same thing,” Rafiullah said. “I saw only one shooter.”

[…]

Rafiullah has largely recovered from the physical wounds.

Rafiullah’s second English-language media interview was published on the eve of the Article 32 hearing in November by the Los Angeles Times, and, like the summary above, was also based on a lengthy early October interview of Rafiullah in Kabul:

November 04, 2012|By Kim Murphy and Ned Parker, Los Angeles Times

“I saw the man in the door and my grandmother crying and screaming,” said a teenager named Rafiullah, who, like many Afghans, uses only one name. Rafiullah said he, his sister and grandmother ran next door and joined several others at the home of Haji Naim.

“The room was a mess, everyone was screaming…. Haji Naim stood up and demanded what is going on. And the American shot him,” he said. “We were seven people in the room when we were shot. My grandmother, my sister, me, two of Haji Naim’s kids [Parmina and Sadiqullah -pw] and two of Haji Nizar’s kids [evidently Haji Nazar’s young daughters Rubbinah and Zulheja -pw].”

The youth swept his hand in front of him as if raking a room with gunfire. “He used a pistol,” he said. Four people, including Rafiullah’s grandmother, died in Alkozai. Six people, among them Rafiullah and his sister, were injured.

[…]

Both youths [Rafiullah, from north of COP Belamby, and Mohammad Dawood’s son Hekmatullah, from south of COP Belamby -pw] described seeing bright lights outside the houses during the attacks.

[…]

Only one family is left in the area of Alkozai where Rafiullah lived; he and his grandfather moved to another village [and/or to the Kandahar city home of Rafiullah’s father Samiullah -pw]. Najiban is a ghost town; residents fled, fearing the Americans and the Taliban. Wazir has moved 2 1/2 hours away to live with his brother in Spin Buldak. He and the others are still haunted by the killings.

Rafiullah said: “I see his face in my dreams, and sometimes I hear my sister waking up at the same time, screaming. I am praying every night, please God don’t make this happen again.”

Then there’s a brief CBS News television interview of Rafiullah, aired the night before Afghan testimony began at the Article 32 hearing, which includes footage of one of Rafiullah’s leg wounds:

November 8, 2012 7:34 PM

Afghans recall massacre horror ahead of soldier’s trial

By Kelly Cobiella

At night, a survivor of the massacre named Rafiullah told CBS News, the nightmares return.

“I see everything clearly,” he said in [Pashto -pw], “Over and over.”

The 15-year-old is one of the few [male… -pw] eyewitnesses to survive the massacre.

Rafiullah said he was at home asleep on March 11th when a man broke down the door.

“He pushed me against the wall, and put the pistol to my sister’s head,” he said. “We all started shouting: ‘Don’t kill her.'”

When the shooting started, Rafiullah ran to another room.

“We heard gunshots,” he said. “My uncle [presumably meaning his great-uncle Nazar Mohammad (brother of Rafiullah’s grandfather Sayed Jan) -pw], my little cousin [Nazar Mohammad’s two-year-old daughter Toraki/Gulalai/Khatima -pw] and my grandmother [Khalida/Nikmarghah -pw] were killed. I was told to put my hands on the wall, and then he shot my sister [pre-teen Zardana -pw] in the head.

Rafiullah was wounded in both thighs. He told us the shooting lasted half an hour. When we asked how many gunmen he had seen that night, Rafiullah answered “One.”

“He wore an American uniform,” he said. “He had a gun but no helmet. He shot us with a pistol.”

Rafiullah’s next English-language media interview was conducted five months after the Article 32 hearing, by Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press, and published May 16, 2013:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP)

From another home that was attacked that night, 16-year-old Rafiullah remembers the American soldier smashing through the door waving his pistol. Awakened in a small room with his grandmother and his sister Zardana, he said he didn’t know what to do. “We just ran and he ran after us.”

[…]

Gesturing with his hand as if spraying the room with gunfire, Rafiullah said the soldier “just went bang, bang, bang.”

Rafiullah was wounded in both his legs, his grandmother was killed and Zardana was shot in the head.

ZARDANA – granddaughter of Haji Sayed Jan & Nikmarghah; daughter of Samiullah and wife

On May 16, 2012, Jon Stephenson of McClatchy reported:

Zardana, Rafiullah’s sister, is the victim most in need of specialized care. Shot in the head, she remains partially paralyzed in the U.S. base hospital. Her uncle, Juma Khan, said U.S. officials had yet to follow through on a pledge to get her more sophisticated care in the United States.

“If the Americans can’t organize these simple things, they should return Zardana to us so the world can see her condition,” he said. “If America can’t help us, we will ask the international community for help.”

Zardana’s first, and so far only, English-language media interview was in April, 2013 with Kathy Gannon of the Associated Press, for a May 16, 2013 story (a year to the day after Stephenson’s valuable, singular report about Zardana’s condition):

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP)

Zardana, 11, said a cousin [Khudaydad, killed at the home of Haji Sayed Jan -pw] dashed over to help. He was shot and killed, she said. “We couldn’t stop. We just wanted somewhere to hide. I was holding on to my grandmother and we ran to our neighbors.” Their neighbor, Naim, came out of his house to see what the noise was all about and was shot and wounded. His daughter then ran to him but was killed [injured, if that daughter is Parmina -pw] by the American soldier, Zardana said, struggling to remember and fiddling with her green scarf decorated with tiny sequins.

Zardana, who said she saw soldiers in a nearby field as she ran from one house to the next, remembers trying to hide behind her grandmother at the neighbor’s house. But the soldier found them.

[…]

She removed her scarf to show where the wound had healed; the effects will last a lifetime. She suffered nerve damage on her left side and has to walk with a cane. Her hand is too weak to hold anything heavy.

Zardana spent about two months recovering at the Kandahar Air Base hospital and three more at a naval hospital in San Diego receiving rehabilitation therapy, accompanied by her father, Samiullah.

[…]

“They showed me so much love,” she said with a tiny smile. “They asked me about what happened and when I told them how my grandmother died and how afraid I was and how I was shot, they cried and cried.”

SAMIULLAH – of Kandahar city; son of Haji Sayed Jan & Nikmarghah; father of Rafiullah & Zardana

In addition to a passing reference to a comment of his in April, 2013, during the first English-language media interview of his injured daughter Zardana (with whom Samiullah spent 2-3 months at a Navy hospital in San Diego in 2012), comments from Samiullah (a Kandahar city resident) have appeared in English-language media accounts about the massacre in March, 2012, March, 2013 (including for the first time on video) and June, 2013, as follows:

First, by Afghan reporter Sayed Salahuddin for the Washington Post, March 23, 2012:

Samisami-Ullah, a 30-year-old farmer, identified those [Alkozai -pw] victims as his mother, uncle and two cousins. Three others in his family were wounded, he said, along with three from his neighbors’ families. Five of the six wounded were transported to a U.S. military hospital, where three victims remain.

One girl, superficially wounded, was treated at a local hospital, villagers said.

[…]

To date [March 23rd, 2012, the date that Bales was charged with 17 murders -pw], the U.S. military has not contacted any witnesses or those who lost relatives, said [Mohammad -pw] Wazir, provincial officials and others who have talked to the massacre victims’ families. “None of them have come to investigate, or to talk to us, or seen the village,” Wazir said angrily. “We want justice.”

[…]

Samisami-Ullah said that wounded relatives told him, “There were 10 soldiers in our neighborhood alone.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I sincerely hope that there are enough American citizens, enough members of our national media, and, most importantly today, enough United States Senators remaining – long-time incumbents and newly-elected alike – who appreciate, and care enough to fight to preserve, the irreplaceable role in our self-governing Republic of a public, deliberative legislative body that democratically creates the laws under which we live. I further hope that enough Americans take heed of these rarely-reported, but unavoidable and pivotal truths about our federal Senate, before the egalitarian Senate, like the House before it, devolves into a barren, backroom-run Party dictatorship that effectively closes the Senate Chamber even to its elected members. [If anyone thinks that’s an exaggeration, please tune in to the House Chamber, and the Speaker-run House Rules Committee, more often. As a direct result of past Party-driven House rule changes, when the House Chamber’s seats are soon filled for the President’s State of the Union address, it will be one of only a handful of days a year when that mostly-empty and sparsely-lit legislative Chamber now ever sees its membership, or even a significant minority thereof, seated together there for any purpose whatsoever, never mind for public legislating.]

The Senate is the last federal legislative body whose longstanding, time-tested default rules – as distinct from its current, corrupt Party practices – still provide for a deliberative, democratic legislative forum at the federal level, despite the destructive and secretive way in which the Senate is now operated by the political Parties. Dishonest partisan claims about the Senate rules are rampant, particularly when it comes to distinguishing between the default simple-majority Senate rules (and accompanying live floor) feared by the Parties, and the 1917-created optional supermajority cloture rule that both Parties now favor – by their actions, if not by their words – in lieu of non-cloture order.

I also hope that there are enough independent-thinking Americans left to ask why, if Senate “rule reform” proponents are acting in good faith and in the best interests of the Senate and nation, these basic facts about our national legislature have been, without challenge by the media, so egregiously omitted, misstated, repeatedly twisted into half-truths, or otherwise abused by them, to obvious Party advantage, at the expense of the nonpartisan Senate itself. In addition to prominent partisan members of the media and others, I’m referring to incumbent federal legislators – in particular, of late, Senators Harry Reid of Nevada, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Tom Harkin of Iowa – who claim to be proponents of fair Senate “reform” – yet somehow manage to assign no blame to their own majority Party for the current dysfunctional state of the Senate. These reformers and their promoters seem to take care never to define exactly what they mean by the word “filibuster,” for example, in terms precise enough to be compared to the actual rules of the Senate. (I’d like to at least credit one or two of these Senators for acting with good intentions, but their longstanding, unwavering Party-protecting refusal to tell the whole truth about the Senate’s present realities makes that difficult.)

The present, indisputable Senate dysfunction, I think any fair, honest diagnosis of the procedural cause(s) would find, is due to the ongoing two-Party abuse of Senate “quorum call” practice; the current majority Party’s record use of the supermajority cloture motion rule in the absence of debating filibusters (yes, the majority Democrats have voluntarily imposed that supermajority rule on themselves for fear of a live Senate floor, as further explained below, and at greater length elsewhere); the very destructive blocking of legislative floor deliberation by Majority Leader Reid’s abusive filling of the procedural amendment “tree,” or chart, with nonsense amendments (to avoid being “blindsided,” as Reid calls democratic floor amending); and to other Party practices that short-change or end-run regular parliamentary procedure – such as, to quote from December remarks by Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, the fact that “we have seen rule XIV used to bypass committee work nearly 70 times in the last 6 years.” (I assume that I don’t need to spell out why partisan Senators of a self-serving Party minority do not voluntarily speak up to point out to the public and media that the Senate’s default rules provide for simple-majority order, even as the majority Party continues to regularly displace those default rules with an optional supermajority cloture rule…)

The two national fundraising organizations known as Parties demand that our federal representatives ‘play for pay’ in the widely-despised but media-fed “team sport” of raw Party power grabs that now dominates our federal House and Senate. To their discredit, almost all of our federal representatives agree to “play” for their “teams,” when it matters most to Party leadership, in the name of job security or for fear of ‘rocking the boat.’ (“Independent” Bernie Sanders and veteran Senate Budget Committee Chair Kent Conrad most definitely included. It was now-retired Conrad who used the term “team sport” while lamenting on his way out of the Senate what Congress has become, and yet Conrad, at Party direction, for years obediently prevented his own committee from acting on a Senate budget as required by law – Party direction that apparently originated across the “separated-power” dividing line in the White House.) We, however – unlike, dangerously, most of our national media organizations via political campaign advertising – aren’t receiving Party perks or pay-offs, and can and should tell the truth about what’s being done, or not being done, in our names in Congress.

Lewis Lapham quoting an 1838 James Fenimore Cooper description of the forthright conduct that we should all insist our public servants demonstrate in such a debate:

“[T]he conviction of the necessity of speaking truth, when speaking at all; a contempt for all designing evasions of our real opinions. In all the general concerns, the public has a right to be treated with candor.”

So, once more with feeling, these are some of the truths that Party loyalists don’t want to hear, and will not speak: Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, March 5, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder gave a speech to law students in Chicago. The speech tried to clothe in a veneer of lawfulness the unchecked Executive Branch killing of American citizens, particularly the long-premeditated killing reported here – this time making the case outside the narrow, credulous confines of the D.C. Circuit appellate court, where federal judges consistently refuse to enforce Constitutional limits on Executive Branch departments (like Holder’s DOJ) when only the pleas of the powerless are at stake.

Holder’s carefully crafted presentation was, of course, a speech that amounts to the police and military powers of the Executive Branch of the government saying to the nation:

“Trust us, citizens. Sure we’ll comply with the requirements of the ‘law of war’ and the broader field of ‘international law,’ in our ‘wartime’ actions at home and abroad – particularly when nobody ever bothers to enforce those requirements….”

To cite just the most glaring, decade-long example of this Holder-promoted Executive Branch ability to opt-out of “law” altogether, in practice, under cover of “the law of war” (as noted in the 3/1 update to my related launch post): If – as claimed by the Executive Branch, whenever the “law of war” threatens to be enforced – “wartime” detainees aren’t detained (in Guantanamo, or Bagram, etc., etc.) pursuant to the 3rd Geneva Convention POW treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate (which mandates proper Article 5/Army Regulation 190-8 screening, and thus, if faithfully observed, adequate “non-judicial” due process) as part of an international armed conflict, then they’re detained pursuant to domestic law and its due process guarantees, and not pursuant to the international law of war.

But then, of course, we have the arguments that are hauled out by the DOJ when domestic law threatens to reassert itself (quoting from the 12/7/2010 Judge John Bates opinion that obligingly echoed government assertions of unchecked presidential power, and sealed Anwar Al-Awlaki’s fate): To hope to prevail against today’s national security state, Judge Bates decrees, a plaintiff (even one on a presidential hit list) must first overcome the “threshold” hurdles of “standing, the [judiciary-concocted, so-called] political question doctrine, the Court’s exercise of its ‘equitable discretion,’ the absence of a cause of action under the Alien Tort Statute (‘ATS’), and the [judiciary-concocted, so-called] state secrets privilege.”

Meanwhile, our Congress continues to allow itself to be kept in the dark about even the self-serving Executive Branch Office of Legal Counsel’s – or any other – purported legal justification(s) for these armed-conflict-combat-zone-divorced killings.

On Thursday, March 8, 2012, during an unrelated press conference called by the Democratic leaders of the Senate to promote the unfinished Senate version of the reauthorized Surface Transportation Act, one reporter spoke up to ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – the Democratic Boss of the in-the-dark, bystanding Senate – about the Attorney General’s speech, starting at 16:04 of this C-SPAN recording.

Reporter questions Senator Reid 3/8/12, about 3/5 AG Holder speech, at 16:04

My transcription of the reporter’s superb question, and the answer of shameless presidential yes-man Harry Reid of Nevada:

Unidentified Male Reporter (@ 16:04): “Senator Reid?”

Senator Harry Reid: “Yes.”

Reporter: “A non-transportation question, if I might. What did you make of, or what was your reaction to the Attorney General’s speech earlier – to his, his statement that the Authorization for Use of Force that Congress passed [seven(? sic)] years ago justifies the targeting and killing of American citizens overseas who are deemed terrorists, and that due process is not necessarily judicial process?”

Senator Harry Reid (@ 16:32): “I have not studied the decision – the opinion – that he wrote, but in substance I support it 100%.”

________________________________________________________________

Update, 3/12/12:

• Jeremy Scahill caught this follow-up performance by Senator Reid on Sunday, March 11th, during Reid’s interview with Candy Crowley on her CNN show “State of the Union” (the full interview tape is here, the full transcript here):Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki was the teenage son of New Mexico-born Anwar Al-Awlaki, who, with his family, returned to live in Sana’a, Yemen in 2002. The U.S. government killed Abdulrahman in Yemen (along with his teenage cousin, and six others) for being “in the wrong place at the wrong time” – an anonymous “U.S. official” told TIME (or, in the words of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid 3/11/12, for being a “terrorist” who “deserved to be killed”) – with an evening U.S. military-operated drone strike on October 14, 2011, two weeks after Abdulrahman’s father was killed (with three others) on September 30, 2011, also in Yemen, by American missiles that targeted and struck their vehicle(s). [The missiles that killed Anwar Al-Awlaki and three men near him (including Samir Khan, another American citizen) on September 30 were reportedly fired by a drone that was operated by the CIA, and by a U.S. military jet.]
  

  16-year-old Denver-born Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, killed by the U.S. in Yemen on 10/14/2011, two weeks after U.S. missiles killed his father, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki

  The transcript of the Sunday exchange that Scahill witnessed:

  STATE OF THE UNION WITH CANDY CROWLEY

  Interview With Harry Reid; Interview With Dick Gephardt, Steve Forbes

  Aired March 11, 2012 – 09:00 ET

  THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

  […]

  CROWLEY: Right. Let me ask you something about — something the attorney general said recently. He was giving a speech to Northwestern University Law School. And he was suggesting — he said, you know, people are arguing that for some reason the president needs to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a U.S. citizen overseas who’s an operational leader [says who, Candy?? – pow wow] in al Qaeda.

  He says that’s just not accurate. That due process and judicial process are not one and the same. Do you have — and this is creating quite a stir. Do you have any problem with that? Do you understand what that means exactly? [Two different questions, so it’s unclear which one Reid’s first response was answering… – pow wow]

  REID: No, I don’t. But I do know this. The non — the American citizens who have been killed overseas who are terrorists, and, frankly, if anyone in the world deserved to be killed, those three did deserve to be killed.

  CROWLEY: And these were the three [U.S. citizens – Al-Awlaki father and son, plus one of the men killed with Anwar Al-Awlaki on 9/30/11 – pow wow] that were killed in Yemen. And I understand that. But just — are you slightly uncomfortable with the idea that the United States president, whoever it may be, can decide that this or that U.S. citizen living abroad is a threat to national security and kill them?

  REID: Well, I don’t know what the attorney general meant by saying that. I’d have to study it a little bit. I’ve never heard that term [? – pow wow] before. But I think the process is in play. I think it’s one that I think we can live with. And I think with the international war on terror that’s going on now, we’re going to have to make sure that we have the tools to get some of these people who are very bad [says who, Harry Reid?? – pow wow] and comply with American law.

  CROWLEY: And you think that the president should be able to make that decision in conjunction with the folks in the administration without going to a court, without going to you all, anything?

  REID: There is a war going on. There’s no question about that. He’s the commander-in-chief. And there has been guidelines set. And if he follows those [how will you know if he does, or if he doesn’t, “follow” those top-secret, internal “guidelines,” Harry Reid? – pow wow], I think he should be able to do it.

  CROWLEY: Senator Harry Reid, majority leader in the U.S. Senate, come back and see us again. Thank you so much.

  REID: You’re sure welcome, Candy.

(3/14) See also: U.S. Targeted Killings: Official Confusion

(4/21) And see the April 14 report “Drone death in Yemen of an American teenager” by Toronto Star National Security Reporter Michelle Shephard, which includes portions of an interview in Yemen with Nasser Al-Awlaki, the father of Anwar Al-Awlaki and grandfather of Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki: Read the rest of this entry »