Afghan official: Rioting after fatal truck crash was
premeditated
Jeff Schogol
Stars and Stripes
06/02/2006
ARLINGTON, Va. — The rioting that followed
a U.S. military truck crash in Afghanistan was organized, not
spontaneous, an Afghan government official said Thursday.
Several people were killed in riots following
the Monday crash in the Afghan capital of Kabul.
Apparently, the rioters had maps of where to go
on their rampage, said Said T. Jawad, Afghan ambassador to the
United States.
Jawad declined to comment on who the Afghan government
believes organized the riots.
“We have our suspicions. The investigation
is being completed and more than 110 people are arrested, and
we have gathered some important leads about who might be behind
that,” he said.
In the wake of the riots, the Afghan government
called for the prosecution of U.S. troops involved, but criminal
jurisdiction of all U.S. troops rests with the U.S. military,
said Lt. Col. Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman.
Vician said the Status of Forces Agreement between
the two countries was struck on May 28, 2003. At the time the
transitional government was ruling Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai
was elected president in 2004 and parliament was elected in
2005.
“Of course, all U.S. military personnel
are subjected to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and enforcing
discipline is an inherent part of military command and essential
to combat operations,” Vician said.
Jawad said there is no Afghan government initiative
under way to expand its criminal jurisdiction to include U.S.
troops.
He also said the Afghan parliament’s nonbinding
resolution was meant to call for a complete investigation into
the incident. Investigations by the U.S. military and Afghan
authorities so far have shown no wrongdoing on the part of U.S.
troops.
“Our investigation indicates at this point
that it was a simple traffic accident, a failure of the brake
on the steep hill on Kabul, and a mob and a group of instigators
took advantage of that accident and caused a lot of damage and
destruction to property of the Afghan government and Afghan
people,” Jawad said.
The New York Times, on its Web site Wednesday,
quoted the chief of highway police in Kabul, Gen. Amanullah
Gozar, as saying U.S. soldiers fired into the crowd, killing
four people. Gozar, who the Times reported was an eyewitness,
said the soldiers were in the last vehicle in a U.S. army convoy
involved in the crash.
U.S. military spokesman Col. Tom Collins would
only say that the soldiers fired in self-defense.
“Our initial investigation … shows
that fire came from the crowd, and our soldiers used their weapons
to defend themselves,” he said. Asked if this meant that
they fired into or over the crowd, Collins said, “Our
investigation is still looking into this.”
Karzai on Thursday condemned the use of gunfire
by U.S. troops to suppress Afghans.
“The coalition opened fire, and we strongly
condemn that,” Karzai said in a national radio address.
Speaking in his native Pashto language, Karzai
used wording that left open whether the U.S. troops had fired
into a crowd that had gathered at the scene of Monday’s
accident, or only over their heads.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
