Probable cause found in Afghan killings

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The U.S. military already has had a probable-cause hearing for the soldier suspected in the weekend killings of 16 Afghan villagers, but the military still has not released his name or said when charges would be filed.

The military-justice system, in many cases, holds to the same basic tenets as the civilian system. In both civilian and military law, a suspect in a crime cannot be held for more than 48 hours without a court hearing.

“There is a system in place to make sure that people simply aren’t thrown into a dungeon somewhere,” said Eugene R. Fidell, a former Coast Guard judge advocate who teaches law at Yale.

The soldier in the Afghan village killings had such a hearing, and it was determined there was cause to continue holding him, Col. Gary Kolb, a spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition in Kabul, said Tuesday. The 38-year-old staff sergeant and trained sniper is accused of the weekend slaughter of nine children and seven adults in the middle of the night and burning some of the bodies. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the death penalty is a possibility.

Kolb did not say when the hearing took place or give any other details. But Fidell said that under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the hearing was to determine that an offense punishable by court-martial had happened; that there was reason to believe the accused had done it and that there was cause to continue to hold him, such as the possibility he wouldn’t return for trial or would commit another crime if released.

The U.S. military continued Tuesday to withhold the name of the suspect, saying it will not be released until he is formally charged.

“It’s certainly unusual not to even release the name of a person who is taken into custody,” Fidell said. He said he thought, but had no official information, that it was being done for the safety of the soldier’s family over concern there may be retribution against them.

Several factors could complicate evidence in the case. Those include the danger of going to the area to investigate. Taliban insurgents opened fire Tuesday when two brothers of Afghan President Hamid Karzai were leaving a village mosque where they attended a memorial service for villagers killed.

Also, bodies of the victims were buried quickly, in accordance with Muslim law, and without autopsies. Religious clerics said that though it’s rare, exhumation has been done there before if relatives give permission, which is unlikely in this case.