Afghan Translator blames US soldiers for civilian killings
KABUL: (MEP) – Afghan translator links U.S. forces to civilian killings An Afghan interpreter for U.S. Special Forces arrested on accusations of torturing and killing civilians has denied involvement in the murders to Afghan investigators, and said he was always acting on orders from his U.S. military handlers.
Afghan authorities detained Zakeria Kandahari six weeks ago following allegations he was involved in atrocities against civilians in Wardak, a strategically important province close to Kabul.
In a record of the interview being prepared by military investigators and obtained by Reuters, Kandahari said he had worked for U.S. Special Forces across Afghanistan for nine years, most recently in Wardak’s Nerkh district, where the allegations surfaced in February.
“I was a low-rank translator and had no access to roam around inside the base, or in interrogation rooms,” Kandahari told the investigators, according to the three-page document which carried his photograph on the front page, dressed in camouflage fatigues and a hat.
The Afghan government has in the past said that Kandahari is Afghan-American, although his exact background remains unclear.
In the document, Kandahari identified three U.S. Special Forces soldiers as “Dave, chief of the operations, Hagen and Chris” and told Afghan military interrogators that the trio had been fluent in both of Afghanistan’s major languages, Dari and Pashto.
“Kandahari rejects all allegations leveled to him and links the three soldiers to the killings,” the interview document said, citing Kandahari, whose case threatens relations between the government and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), already tense over the issue of civilian deaths.
U.S. military officials have consistently denied Special Forces participated in, or turned a blind-eye to, torture and illegal killings by Afghans working with them in Nerkh.
“U.S. forces conducted several investigations which determined there was no credible evidence to substantiate misconduct by ISAF or U.S. forces,” a senior spokesman for the force told Reuters on Tuesday.
“Having said that, ISAF takes all allegations of detainee abuse seriously and we will continue to cooperate with the Afghan government on this matter,” he said, one TV reported.
