http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05afghan.html

April 4, 2010

U.S. Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid.

The admission immediately raised questions about what really happened during the Feb. 12 operation [1] -- and what falsehoods followed -- including a new report that Special Operations forces dug bullets out of the bodies of the women to hide the true nature of their deaths.

A NATO official also said Sunday in an interview that an Afghan-led team of investigators had found signs of evidence tampering at the scene, including the removal of bullets from walls near where the women were killed. A senior NATO official later denied on Monday that any evidence tampering occurred.

The disclosure could not come at a worse moment for the American military: NATO officials are struggling to contain fallout from a series of tirades against the foreign military presence by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has also railed against the killing of civilians by Western forces.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has tried hard, and with some success, to reduce civilian casualties through new rules that include restricting night raids and also bringing Special Operations forces under tighter control. But botched Special Operations attacks -- which are blamed for a large proportion of the civilian deaths caused by NATO forces -- continue to infuriate Afghans and create support for the Taliban.

NATO military officials had already admitted killing two innocent civilians -- a district prosecutor and local police chief -- during the raid, on a home near Gardez in southeastern Afghanistan. The two men were shot to death when they came out of their home, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, to investigate.

Three women also died that night at the same home: One was a pregnant mother of 10 and another was a pregnant mother of six. NATO military officials had suggested that the women were actually stabbed to death -- or had died by some other means -- hours before the raid, an explanation that implied that family members or others at the home might have killed them.

Survivors of the raid called that explanation a cover-up and insisted that American forces killed the women. Relatives and family friends said the bloody raid followed a party in honor of the birth of a grandson of the owner of the house.

On Sunday night the American-led military command in Kabul issued a statement admitting that "international forces" were responsible for the deaths of the women. Officials have previously stated that American Special Operations forces and Afghan forces conducted the operation.

The statement said that "investigators could not conclusively determine how or when the women died, due to lack of forensic evidence" but that they had nonetheless "concluded that the women were accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men."

"We deeply regret the outcome of this operation, accept responsibility for our actions that night, and know that this loss will be felt forever by the families," said Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, a spokesman for the NATO command in Kabul.

The admission was an abrupt about-face. In a statement soon after the raid, NATO had claimed that its raiding party had stumbled upon the "bodies of three women who had been tied up, gagged and killed" and hidden in a room in the house. Military officials had also said later that the bodies showed signs of puncture and slashing wounds from a knife, and that the women appeared to have been killed several hours before the raid.

And in what would be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also "dug bullets out of their victims' bodies in the bloody aftermath" and then "washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened."

A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said that he did not have any information about the Afghan investigation, which he said remained unfinished.

In an interview, a NATO official said the Afghan-led investigation team alerted American and NATO commanders that the inquiry had found signs of evidence tampering. A briefing was given by investigators to General McChrystal and other military officials in late March.

"There was evidence of tampering at the scene, walls being washed, bullets dug out of holes in the wall," the NATO official said, adding that investigators "couldn't find bullets from the wounds in the body."

The investigators, the official said, "alluded to the fact that bullets were missing but did not discuss anything specific to that. Nothing pointed conclusively to the fact that our guys were the ones who tampered with the scene."

On Monday, a senior NATO official denied that there was any effort to tamper with evidence.

"We have discovered no evidence in our investigation that any of our forces did anything to manipulate the evidence at the scene or the bodies," said the deputy chief of staff for communications for General McChrystal, Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith.

Several bullets that were fired but had not struck either of the two men were removed from the walls, Admiral Smith said. But he said that was done "to make sure what kinds of rounds they were."

NATO officials have also rejected allegations that the killings were covered up. But it was not immediately clear on Sunday night how troops who shot the women and later examined their bodies would not have recognized that it was their bullets that killed them.

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/world/asia/13briefs-Afghanistan.html