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British Soldiers Sent Home For Inquiry On Killing Afghan Teenager
KABUL,
Feb. 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Two British paratroopers have been sent home amid an inquiry into a
shooting incident in which an Afghan teenager was killed, the International
Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said Tuesday.
"Two
of the soldiers are now back in the U.K. This is entirely normal procedure and
in no way prejudges the outcome of any investigation," Captain Graham
Dunlop, a press officer with the British-led
ISAF, said.
"They are not under arrest and they are cooperating fully with the
inquiry."
He
said six soldiers from the British
2nd Parachute Battalion were involved in the incident in the early hours of
Saturday, February 16, in which they claimed they responded to an armed attack
on one of their outposts here.
But
the family of the dead man, Hamayon Yaqobi, 19, said Monday, February 18, that
he was a civilian trying to rush his pregnant sister-in-law to hospital at
around 2:00 am (2130 GMT Friday) when ISAF troops opened fire on their car.
The incident took place during a regular night curfew, but Yaqobi's uncle
said the car's headlights were on, indicating there was an emergency, and no
shots were fired at the ISAF troops occupying a nearby factory building.
He
said four other people were injured, including the pregnant woman who later gave
birth to a boy in hospital despite wounds to her neck and foot.
Dunlop said British
military police were investigating the incident in cooperation with Afghan
police, and at this stage there was no change to ISAF's version of events.
"The soldiers maintain that that is the case [they were fired on and
returned fire] and our position has not changed," he told AFP.
According to a report in the British newspaper, The
Guardian, Colonel Zemary Fazil, a senior Afghan police officer investigating the
incident, said there was no evidence to suggest the six paratroopers had been
fired at.
Col
Fazli said the soldiers "inexplicably" started shooting at the car as
it set off from the Kartiya Hamurin district of Kabul at 1.45am. The
paratroopers, who were stationed in an observation post in the tower of a
disused Russian bakery, first fired between three and five single shots, he
said.
They
then switched to automatic fire and pumped 20 more bullets into the car, he
said. The soldiers, who were nearly 1,000 meters away from their target, also
fired three flares to illuminate the scene, the paper added.
"Before
they attacked they should have tried to find out what the people in the car were doing," he said.
"They
were poor people,” he
added. “They did not have any weapons. I was in the area and I didn't hear any
shots fired at ISAF [the international security assistance force]. My firm
conclusion from having talked to police and local people is that the British
troops started the shooting. My investigation is now finished."
Mohammad
Ishaq, 25, described Monday, February 18, how he and his family -- including
brother Hamyoon, 20 -- defied a curfew to drive to a Kabul hospital in the early
hours of Saturday, after his wife went into labor with their first child, the
Guardian reported.
They
had just got into the car when they were engulfed in a sudden and deadly hail of
gunfire from British troops concealed in the darkness at the top of an
observation tower several hundred meters away.
"There
was no warning. We didn't even know there were soldiers there,” Ishaq said. “Then bullets started hitting the car. The firing went on
for about three minutes. We all crouched down. After a minute I shouted to my
brother: 'Are you OK?' But he didn't answer."
"When
I peered up I saw that he was dead. He had been hit in the back of the head by a
bullet. The bullet had come out through his front temple. The women were crying
and shrieking and screaming. The neighbors came out when the firing stopped and
dragged my brother's body into our house."
Ishaq's
21-year-old wife, Faria, suffered shrapnel wounds to her neck and knee. Shocked
and bleeding, she staggered home where she gave birth to a boy. Ishaq said his son appeared to be healthy despite the traumatic manner
of his birth. He did not yet have a name.
Hamayon's
uncle, Nasrullah Yaqobi, has demanded compensation from ISAF and a trial of the
troops involved, according to AFP.
Under an agreement with the U.N.-backed interim administration in Kabul, Dunlop
said Britain had "exclusive jurisdiction over its soldiers".
He said the four other British
troops involved in the incident "will be cooperating fully" with the
inquiry and were still engaged in unspecified duties in the Afghan capital.
ISAF
troops patrolling Kabul Monday night investigated bursts of gunfire which were
heard around 8:00 pm, but Dunlop could not provide further details. ISAF will
reach some 4,000 troops with the arrival of a contingent of Greek soldiers Tuesday, Dunlop added.
The
British-led multinational
force is due to peak at around 4,500 troops later this month. It began deploying
here in mid-December and is restricted to patrolling the capital.
Interim
Afghan leader Hamid Karzai has called for more foreign troops to be sent to the
outlying provinces amid sporadic outbreaks of fighting between rival warlords
and clan leaders.
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