Evidence Mounts NATO Report Lied on Afghan Civilian Killings

Rear Admiral Smith Admits No Evidence of Claimed ‘Firefight’

by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, March 12, 2010

The February 12 night raid against a house party in Afghanistan’s Paktia Province remains shrouded in mystery, but NATO’s official story appears to be crumbling as even NATO officials concede that the claims made were not strictly true.

NATO’s official statement claimed at the time that the raid on the home led to a “fire fight” against “several insurgents” who were killed, before NATO made a “gruesome discovery” of bound and gagged bodies in a nearby room.

NATO is conceding now that all of the slain people were civilians killed in the raid. NATO communications direct Rear Admiral Greg Smith also admitted that they had no real evidence that the men slain at the home had ever fired a shot against the NATO forces.

Witnesses at the site reported that one of the people in the compound, a local policeman, shouted “don’t fire, we work for the government” before being gunned down by the invading forces.

Rear Admiral Smith defended the killing of the policeman, however, saying “if you have got an individual stepping out of a compound, and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise (read: kill) the individual. You don’t have to be fired upon to fire back.

Since the incident, all those detained by NATO have been released without charges. In addition, the US has reportedly paid $2,000 to the family for each of the civilians killed in the attack.

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Tags: Afghan war, civilians killed, NATO raid, NATO report, Rear Admiral Smith