Norway massacre: Breivik visited Malta for ‘historical research’

Breivik shot ‘several films’ in Malta

timesofmalta.com | Apr 30, 2012

by Christian Peregin

Norwegian terrorist mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik visited Malta with his mother in 2004 to conduct “historic research” for his manifesto but told the police he never made any permanent contacts on the island.

The visit came 10 days after Mr Breivik’s 25th birthday, The Times has learnt.

Mr Breivik – who is currently standing trial for killing 77 people at a summer camp organised by the ruling Labour party – gave details about his trip to the island to the Norwegian police when he was interrogated.

This is the first time details of his visit have emerged. In his manifesto, the anti-Muslim funda­mentalist listed 24 countries he had visited, including “exotic” destinations like Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, China, Mexico, Cyprus and Malta.

When the police asked him about his trip to Malta, Mr Breivik initially said he did not remember his stay on the island.

Norwegian killer visited Malta

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Members of the Order of Knights Templar gather in Australia for ‘Malta Festival’

Breivik: How I met Knights Templar ‘Richard the Lionheart’ in a London cafe

Breivik’s Knights Templar ‘mentor’ in Malta linked to exiled UDA loyalist Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair

Leader of Ancient Order of the Templar Knights in Malta denies mentoring Norwegian killer

However, when the police quoted flight records showing he landed on February 23, 2004, Mr Breivik confirmed this was a week-long holiday with his mother.

According to sources, Mr Breivik said he paid for the trip, through a Norwegian travel agency, as a gift to his mother and the two stayed at an “apartment-style” hotel close to Valletta.

It was his decision to fly to Malta and investigate how it had been at the forefront of “Europe’s defence from North Africa”.

Although his mother did not share his fascination with history, Mr Breivik saw this as a “historic journey” in which he researched various historical aspects to include in his manifesto.

Sources said he told the police he kept his research secret from his mother and made it a point to spend time alone while in Malta.

Mr Breivik also told the police that he did not make any “permanent contacts” in Malta, even though he shot “several films” from the island.

Mr Breivik has admitted killing all his victims but pleaded not guilty, claiming his Utoya massacre was an act of self-defence and those who died were “legitimate political targets”.

He had posted a 12-minute YouTube video, “Knights Templar 2083” six hours before the massacre, recycling the iconography of the crusades into a vision of the future that sees Christians having to fight Muslims once again. In his outlandish manifesto, Mr Breivik had given a list of anti-immigration or far-right parties that included the Nationalist Party, along with actual Maltese hard-right parties like Imperium Europa, Viva Malta and Azzjoni Nazzjonali.

The PN disassociated itself from this claim.

Mr Breivik was also linked to Malta-based far-right blogger Paul Ray who blogs about his fear of a Muslim invasion in Europe under the pseudonym Lionheart, and was linked by the British press to Mr Breivik.

Mr Ray’s pseudonym was mentioned twice in Mr Breivik’s manifesto but his blog or real name were never cited and Mr Ray has flatly denied any connection.

Breivik: How I met Knights Templar ‘Richard the Lionheart’ in a London cafe

EDL member Paul Ray in Malta, left. He noted similarities between his blog and the manifesto written by Anders Breivik, right Photo: ALLOVER NORWAY / REX FEATURES

Claims to have met three people in London to create Knights Templar in 2002

Daily Mail | Apr 18, 2012

A meeting between Anders Breivik and an English anti-Islamic militant calling himself ‘Richard the Lionheart’ was outlined in court yesterday.

Nine years before his killing spree left 77 dead, the Norwegian said he was sitting in a London cafe with members of an extremist group called Knights Templar, to plot ‘how to seize power in Western Europe’.

As well as ‘Richard the Lionheart’, Breivik was also ‘ordained’ by the group and given the name of the 12th-century Norwegian king, Sigurd ‘the Crusader’.

Under cross-examination on the third day of his trial yesterday, the right-wing extremist initially refused to discuss meetings in Liberia and London in April and May 2002 as he joined a network of ‘like-minded’ militant anti-Muslim nationalists.

But after repeated questioning by prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh, who told him she was trying to shed doubt on the network’s existence, he conceded he had travelled to Africa and London ten years ago to help set up his Knights Templar (KT) movement.

Norway killer Breivik: Voices in my head told me ‘Don’t do this’

Norway killer ‘mentor’: Breivik NOT a lone wolf, but part of larger agenda

Norway police to question Anders Behring Breivik’s British Knights Templar mentor

Breivik’s Knights Templar ‘mentor’ in Malta linked to exiled UDA loyalist Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair

For the first time Breivik, 33, appeared rattled as it emerged he left Oslo on April 17, 2002, to fly to the Ivory Coast before entering Liberia, posing as an aid worker. Breivik said that once there he met an exiled Serbian ‘war hero’, but refused to identify the man.

Breivik became agitated and claimed Norwegian police had not been clever enough to uncover the KT movement’s members. He said: ‘Exactly what is it you’re getting at? Are you trying to sow doubt over whether the KT network exists? It does.’

The court heard that Breivik flew to London in late April 2002 where he attended a founding session of the KT movement but he refused to give exact details of his co-conspirators.

As images of Breivik’s 1,800-page manifesto were flashed on to screens, the court heard that he met three other founding members of the Knights Templar during his London visit. At 23, he was the youngest member of the group.

There were two Englishmen – including his ‘mentor’, Richard the Lionheart – and a French nationalist at the founding meeting. Breivik told the court: ‘It is not in my interest here to discuss what went on.

What I will say is that Richard was responsible for calling the meeting.’
In his manifesto, Breivik said: ‘It was basically a long-term plan on how to seize power in Western Europe.’

He told the court that the people he had met in London had ‘great integrity’ and how his codename of ‘Crusader’ was taken from Sigurd Magnusson, a 12th-century Viking king.

Asked if he felt he had met some ‘like-minded friends’ in London, he said: ‘I felt I was a foot soldier associated with the others. Now I feel I have managed to do what I wanted to do.’

Breivik also said he should face the death penalty – describing the 21 years he faces in prison as ‘pathetic’.

When asked if he thought Norway should introduce the death penalty, he replied: ‘It would be the right thing.’

Paul "LionHeart" Ray heads the Ancient Order of Knights Templar in Malta where Anders Breivik visited before the attacks

Norway police to question Anders Behring Breivik’s British Knights Templar mentor

Leader of Ancient Order of the Templar Knights in Malta denies mentoring Norwegian killer

Norway killer sharpened aim on computer games

Anders Behring Breivik is pictured during his trial at the central court in Oslo on April 20, 2012. Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway last July, took the stand again on the third day of his trial, a day after telling the court he would carry out his attacks again if he could. Getty Images

Breivik said he played the computer game “Modern Warfare” for 16 months starting in January 2010, primarily to get a feel for how to use rifle sights. In 2006 he devoted a full year to playing “World of Warcraft,” for 16 hours a day, he said.

USA TOday | Apr 21, 2012

OSLO, Norway (AP) – Anders Behring Breivik knew it would take practice to be able to slaughter dozens of people before being shot by police.

Breivik, who styles himself as a modern-day crusader, has confessed to the attacks but rejects criminal guilt, saying he was acting to protect Norway and Europe by targeting a left-leaning political party he claims have betrayed the country by opening it up to immigration.

Since Breivik has admitted to the bombing in Oslo that killed eight people and the shooting massacre at the Labor Party youth camp that left 69 dead, the key issue of the trial is to establish whether he is criminally insane.

For the first time since the trial started, Breivik didn’t flash his right-wing salute when he entered the courtroom Thursday, heeding the advise of his defense lawyer. But those who were hoping for signs of regret were disappointed.

The 33-year-old Norwegian was ice cold when he once again described his victims as “traitors” for their links to Norway’s governing Labor Party.

“Militant nationalists are split in two,” Breivik said. “One half says you should attack Muslims and minorities. The other half says you should attack elites, those who are responsible.”

The government building he tried to blow up was “the most attractive political target in all of Norway,” he said.

He was disappointed to hear on a car radio as he was driving to the youth camp on Utoya island that the building didn’t collapse.

Breivik said he had planned to capture and decapitate former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland while filming it, but she had left Utoya earlier that day.

The self-styled crusader said he was inspired by al-Qaida’s use of decapitation, but noted that “beheading is a traditional European death penalty.”

“It was meant to be used as a very powerful psychological weapon,” he said.

Brundtland was prime minister for the Labor Party for 10 years. She later headed the World Health Organization and was appointed as a U.N. climate change envoy in 2007.

Her adviser, Jon Moerland, told The Associated Press, “Gro Harlem Brundtland has no comment on the information provided by Breivik, nor the court case in general.”

Breivik said he played the computer game “Modern Warfare” for 16 months starting in January 2010, primarily to get a feel for how to use rifle sights. In 2006 he devoted a full year to playing “World of Warcraft,” for 16 hours a day, he said.

Since Breivik has admitted to the bombing in Oslo that killed eight people and the shooting massacre at the Labor Party youth camp that left 69 dead, the key issue of the trial is to establish whether he is criminally insane.

For the first time since the trial started, Breivik didn’t flash his right-wing salute when he entered the courtroom Thursday, heeding the advise of his defense lawyer. But those who were hoping for signs of regret were disappointed.

The 33-year-old Norwegian was ice cold when he once again described his victims as “traitors” for their links to Norway’s governing Labor Party.

“Militant nationalists are split in two,” Breivik said. “One half says you should attack Muslims and minorities. The other half says you should attack elites, those who are responsible.”

Christopher Ferguson, of Texas A&M International University, said there is no link between violent video games and violent behavior. Though some research suggests that action games can improve “visuospatial cognition,” he said it’s difficult to say whether Breivik could have improved his accuracy by playing “Modern Warfare.”

“Let us keep in mind too that he was shooting kids on an island from which they could not escape easily,” Ferguson said. “That does not require great accuracy.”

Breivik said his original plans were to set off three bombs in Oslo, including at the royal palace, but building just one fertilizer bomb turned out to be “much more difficult than I thought.”

His preferred targets for the shooting massacre were an annual conference of Norwegian journalists or the Labor Party’s annual meeting. But he couldn’t get prepared in time, so he decided on striking against the summer retreat of the Labor Party’s youth wing.

Breivik said he had expected to be confronted by armed police when he left Oslo for Utoya island, armed with a handgun and a rifle — both named after Norse gods.

“I estimated the chances of survival as less than 5 percent,” he said.

During his testimony, Breivik calmly answers questions from prosecutors, except when they ask about the alleged anti-Muslim “Knights Templar” network he claims to belong to. Prosecutors say they don’t believe it exists.

When he smiled at one point during questioning Wednesday, Prosecutor Svein Holden asked him how he thought the bereaved watching the proceedings in court would react to that.

“They probably react in a natural way, with horror and disgust,” Breivik said. He said he smiled because he knew where Holden was going with his line of questioning.

The main point of his defense is to avoid an insanity ruling, which would deflate his political arguments. He repeatedly accuses prosecutors of trying to “ridicule” him by highlighting portions of a rambling, 1,500-page manifesto he posted before the attacks.

In it — and in a shortened version he read to the court on Tuesday — he said the “Knights Templar” will lead a revolt against “multiculturalist” governments around Europe, with the aim of deporting Muslims.

If found sane, Breivik could face a maximum 21-year prison sentence or an alternate custody arrangement that would keep him locked up as long as he is considered a menace to society. If declared insane, he would be committed to psychiatric care for as long as he’s considered ill.

Virginia Tech massacre survivors, family press U.S. lawmakers on gun laws

Agence France-Presse | Apr 16, 2012

WASHINGTON — Survivors and relatives of victims of US shootings marked the fifth anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre Monday by calling on Congress to “put an end to this madness” of gun violence.

The anniversary of the worst school shooting in US history, in which 32 students and faculty died, comes at a moment of intense debate over US gun laws, race relations and the right to self-defense.

“Today, 32 more will be murdered by guns in our nation. Yes, another Virginia Tech will happen today, like it happens every day,” Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told reporters outside the US Capitol, backed by a symbolic 32 survivors and relatives of victims from various massacres and shooting sprees.

“And that’s why we’re here to say enough is enough, and to hold the people who do their work in that building behind us accountable to put an end to this madness.”

Virginia Tech was the scene of the worst school shooting in US history when Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old Virginia Tech student born in South Korea, shot to death 32 fellow classmates and teachers before killing himself.

Gross and a US congressman from the district where the university is located put the blame for the proliferation of firearms and the high level of US gun violence squarely on the powerful gun lobby.

“Americans need to ask: where is the outrage?” congressman Jim Moran said, citing figures that show more than 100,000 people are shot — and 12,000 murdered — with a firearm each year in the United States.

“Guns permeate our culture,” Moran said. And despite the overwhelming number of them, “the National Rifle Association (NRA)… believes the answer to that gun violence that those guns generate is, even more guns.”

The NRA has been extremely successful in undermining gun controls. Some 40 US states now have permissive concealed weapon laws, up from just two in 1981.

“Here in Congress and in far too many state houses across the country, their side is in fact winning, loosening already porous gun laws, and blocking passage of any sensible gun control measures,” Moran said.

The issue has surged to the fore in recent weeks with the shooting death of a 17-year-old African-American, Trayvon Martin, in Florida by a self-described neighborhood watch guard.

Norway killer Anders Behring Breivik cries tears of nostalgia during own propaganda film

Anders Behring Breivik raises his fist as he arrives to courtroom for the first day of his trial in Oslo, Monday. Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters

Norwegian, who says he killed 77 people in self-defence, is ‘emotional’ as film he made to justify one-man war is played

guardian.co.uk | Apr 16, 2012

by Helen Pidd in Oslo

In an average year, 30 murders are committed in Norway. In three hours one afternoon in July last year, Anders Behring Breivik more than doubled that figure. Yet when he appeared at the first day of his trial on Monday, the 33-year-old insisted he was not guilty of acts of terrorism resulting in the deaths of 77 people.

“I acknowledge the acts,” Breivik told Oslo central court when asked to enter a plea. “But I do not plead guilty and I claim that I was doing it in self defence.”

His lawyer had already warned that this would be how Breivik would justify planting an enormous bomb outside the government quarters in Oslo, killing eight people, before heading to the island of Utøya to gun down 69 more attending a summer camp of the ruling Labour party.

Earlier, he announced that he did not recognise the Norwegian court – because, he said, it receives its mandate “from political parties who support multiculturalism”.

Breivik was defiant as he arrived in court, giving a closed-fist salute before shaking hands with prosecutors and court officials and then declaring himself a “writer” when asked for his occupation.

Anders Breivik to Norway court: I killed 77 people but am not guilty

Breivik Cries in Court Watching His Own Propaganda Video

Knights Templar 2083 Movie by Anders Behring Breivik

Breivik wiped away tears as he watched a trailer for a propaganda film he had made to justify the one-man war which reached its awful conclusion on 22 July.

According to a lip-reader for the Norwegian broadcaster TV2, Breivik is to have said that watching the film made him “emotional”.

Breivik has said the attacks were necessary to protect Norway from being taken over by Muslims.

He remained impassive as prosecutors read out the indictment, which detailed not just the crimes for which Breivik was standing trial – charges of terrorism “with the intention of seriously intimidating a population” – but also those he had killed, and how they had died.

It made harrowing listening, the clinical medical details pinpointing how Breivik had ended so many young lives.

The youngest to die on Utøya was Sharidyn Meegan Ngahiwi Svebakk-Bohn, who had just celebrated her 14th birthday. Along with 10 others, she was shot on Kjærlighetsstien, which translates as Lovers’ Path.

The prosecutor read: “She was in the area by the escarpment below Lovers’ Path and was shot twice with the pistol and/or rifle. One of the shots penetrated inter alia the left lung, the main stem of the pulmonary artery and the aorta. The other shot crushed the 11th chest vertebra and liver, leaving through the right flank. Svebakk-Bohn died of the gunshot injuries to the chest causing internal and external blood loss.”

Breivik’s crimes were “extremely serious offences on a scale that has never previously been experienced in our country in modern times”, said the prosecutor, Svein Holden. The result, he added, has “given rise to serious fear in parts of the Norwegian population”.

Much of the morning in court was given over to explaining how, not why, Breivik had planned the attacks.

The five-member panel of judges was told that Breivik’s shift towards extremism began in high school when he joined the youth wing of the Norwegian Progress party.

He had told investigators he was a resistance fighter in a far-right militant group modelled after the Knights Templar, a western Christian order that fought during the crusades. He claimed he joined the group after connecting with “militant nationalists over the internet” who eventually invited him to a meeting in London in 2002. But police have found no trace of any organisation and say he acted alone.

“In our opinion, such a network does not exist,” Holden said.

The court heard Breivik’s initial plan was to be an “economic supporter” of the anti-Islam movement in western Europe. He appeared to stockpile “considerable amounts of money” made from selling fake diplomas and school certificates online.

But in 2006, Breivik folded his company and moved in with his mother in her Oslo flat. It was at this point, say prosecutors, where Breivik decided to become “active” against what he saw as a Muslim takeover of western Europe. The judges were shown a picture of Breivik’s bedroom, with the computer where Holden said he played the game World of Warcraft “full time” between the summer of 2006 and 2007.

Working from his mother’s house, he composed a rambling manifesto he published online before the attacks. In it, Breivik wrote that “patriotic resistance fighters” should use trials “as a platform to further our cause”.

“Anders Breivik Is Not Crazy” – The Surprise Defense Of Norway’s Mass Killer

Geir Lippestad, Anders Breivik’s lawyer (AleWi)

Interview: Anders Breivik is unlike any client attorney Geir Lippestad has ever had – and not just because of the ghastly number of murders he’s accused of. As Lippestad tells Le Monde, Breivik admits to killing 77 mostly young Norwegians and expects to be held accountable.

LE MONDE/Worldcrunch | Mar 27, 2012

By Olivier Truc

OSLO – Geir Lippestad will definitely cause some controversy with the approach he plans to take in the upcoming trial of Anders Breivik, Norway’s infamous extreme-right terrorist. For starters, Lippestad, Breivik’s defense attorney, intends to place Mullah Krekar — an Islamist extremist from Kurdish Iraq who has been living in Norway since 1991– on the witness stand.

In an interview with Le Monde, Lippestad outlined his strategy for this exceptional trial, which is scheduled to begin April 16, less than eight months after the double attack on July 22, 2011, in which 77 people died. The majority of the victims were attending a summer camp hosted by the youth wing of the governing Social Democratic party.

This trial has seriously challenged Lippestad’s beliefs as both a support of the Social Democrats and a father of eight children. “I feel I have lost my soul in this case,” he said. “I hope to get it back once all this is over, and that it will be in the same state as before.”

Unlike all of Lippestad’s previous clients, Anders Breivik is not afraid of being found guilty. The possibility of receiving Norway’s maximum penalty (21 years in prison) doesn’t scare him – on the contrary, he wants it.

“This trial is unique, just like the dreadful acts that will be judged,” said Lippestad. “We have to think differently. In the majority of trials, you have a defendant who denies the facts or who says he didn’t intend to do what he did. Here you have someone who recognizes the facts, who takes responsibility for them, and who says he would do the same thing again if the opportunity arose.”

“He doesn’t intend to run away from his responsibilities,” the attorney added. “Quite the opposite, he wants to be found sane and accountable [for his actions].”

Not so paranoid after all

Lippestad initially based his defense on his client’s poor mental health. The first two psychiatrists who examined Breivik declared him insane. But in the end, the lawyer decided to follow his client’s wishes.

The idea that Breivik could be declared not criminally responsible and therefore escape a prison sentence had distressed a large part of the Norwegian population. A second team of psychiatrists has been appointed to evaluate him. They are expected to present their conclusions on April 10. Even if these psychiatrists confirm the first team’s findings, Breivik’s lawyer won’t change anything about his client’s defense.

“It is about showing that his beliefs and way of thinking are common,” said Lippestad. “He is not as unique, as paranoid or schizophrenic as the experts say.”

Lippestad is counting on exposing discrepancies in the expert opinions. “What we see is that there is a gap between what the human sciences say on extremism, and what doctors and psychiatrists know.” In Lippestad’s opinion, many of those who share Breivik’s ideas are classified as extremists, not psychotic. Why, therefore, should he be considered insane?

“We will place people from extremist backgrounds on the witness stand to explain their thought process in order to establish that there are others who, without going as far as to commit the crime, share the same ideology and way of thinking,” said Lippestad. “What we want to show is that we are dealing with an ideology and that he is not the only person to stand behind [those beliefs]; that he is not a psychotic living in a separate world.”

A controversial star witness

By summoning Mullah Krekar to testify –potentially alongside other Islamists– Lippestad wants to show that “Islamists also believe that Europe is the setting for a war of religion and that it is not just a delusion that Breivik has imagined.”

Krekar, real name Faraj Ahmad Najmuddin and often called the “most controversial refugee in Norway,” used to be the leader of Ansar Al-Islam, a small Islamist group from Iraqi Kurdistan that carried out several attacks there. In a book published in Norway in 2004, Krekar admitted to having met Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in about 1990 in the hope of receiving some financial help for his guerrilla group. He left the meeting empty handed.

The lawyer intends to place the Norwegian blogger “Fjordman,” believed to be Breivik’s main inspiration, on the witness stand as well. Breivik cites Fjordman in his 1,500-page manifesto, which he distributed on the Internet just before the attacks.

It is Breivik himself who is orchestrating the strategy defended by Lippestad. While waiting for his trial, he is doing lots of exercise. He also has access to a work cell equipped with a computer. “He doesn’t have Internet access, but he can write, and he is preparing a speech that he intends to read during the trial,” said Lippestad.

The defendant receives letters, watches television and reads the newspapers. “He writes letters to five or six people whom he considers to be his ideological brothers and sisters, in Norway and abroad,” the attorney explained.

“His motivation for carrying out these monstrosities was to distribute his manifesto,” Lippestad added. “Breivik believes that the revolution will start in France or England because, according to him, multiculturalism is very conflicting there.”

Police: Knights Templar organization “doesn’t exist”

Foreigner | Mar 27, 2012

Anders Breivik Behring may have invented the Knights Templar, Norwegian police believe.

“According to intelligence information shared by British authorities and other countries’ authorities, there is no indication that there must have been such an organization,” police prosecutor Pål-Fredrik Hjort Kraby told NRK.

Breivik had claimed that he is a member, both during his interrogations and in his written manifesto. Moreover, he alleged it was formed during a secret meeting in 2002. Nonetheless, officers have found no evidence showing that “Knights Templar” exists.

A few days following the July 22nd attacks, British Right-Wing extremist Paul Ray had told the Associated Press that there is such a group, though he claimed it had no formal structure. Mr Ray refused to disclose the number of members of the group.

Police also say they doubt Breivik’s claims another two cells are ready to conduct more terrorist attacks, believing it was purely a fright-creating ploy.

“Based on the fact that we have not found any information that supports what he says about this organization, or the other cells, our theory is that he must have wanted to create a picture of fear in society. He wants us to believe this is part of the threat scenario he wishes to impart,” concludes Pål-Fredrik Hjort Kraby.

33-year-old Anders Breivik has admitted carrying out both attacks in Oslo and on Utøya, but has not acknowledged guilt. He has been charged with committing acts of terror.

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• Leader of Ancient Order of the Templar Knights in Malta denies mentoring Norwegian killer
• Breivik’s Knights Templar ‘mentor’ in Malta linked to exiled UDA loyalist Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair

U.S. Quickly Pays Off Afghan Families of Victims in Massacre

A graveside vigil Saturday for a shooting victim. A provincial official said he was grateful for “help with the grieved families.” Allauddin Khan/Associated Press

Mr. Lalai described the payments as “assistance” to the wounded and the families of the dead, but not as the kind of traditional compensation that would absolve the accused of responsibility for the crimes.

nytimes.com | Mar 25, 2012

By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and SANGAR RAHIMI

KABUL, Afghanistan — The families of 16 Afghan villagers who were killed this month by a rampaging American soldier were given $50,000 by the United States for each of their relatives who died, Afghan and American officials said.

The payments were made on Saturday by American military officers at the office of the governor of Kandahar Province, where the killings took place. The people wounded in the attacks were each given $11,000, said Hajji Agha Lalai, a member of the Kandahar provincial council.

Hajji Jan Agha, who lost cousins in the killings, said he and other relatives were invited to the governor’s office by foreign and Afghan officials, according to Reuters. “They said this money is an assistance from Obama,” Mr. Agha was quoted as saying.

Mr. Lalai described the payments as “assistance” to the wounded and the families of the dead, but not as the kind of traditional compensation that would absolve the accused of responsibility for the crimes.

Related

US makes payments to families of Afghan shooting victims

“We are grateful to the United States government for its help with the grieved families. But this cannot be counted as compensation for the deaths,” he said.

In discussions before the payments were made, American officials were also careful to draw a similar distinction, saying that any eventual payments would be out of compassion for the victims, and that Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the soldier accused of killing the villagers, would still face trial.

An American official confirmed on Sunday that payments had been made to victims but refused to discuss specifics. Compensation payments are kept private as a matter of American policy, the official said, adding that it was up to the recipients to decide whether to talk about what they were given.

Sergeant Bales, who was flown out of Afghanistan soon after the killings, was formally charged on Friday with 17 counts of murder and 6 counts of assault and attempted murder. He is being held at a military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

According to Afghan and American officials, Sergeant Bales walked off his small combat outpost in a rural area of Kandahar Province in the early hours of March 11 and shot and stabbed at least 16 people, including 9 children and 4 women.

American military officials in Afghanistan said that Sergeant Bales, who is 38 and was serving his fourth combat tour overseas, would have been issued a 9-millimeter pistol and an M-4 rifle with a grenade-launcher attachment, though they could not confirm that he was carrying those weapons at the time of the killings.

Neither Afghan nor American officials have explained the discrepancy between the official Afghan government death toll of 16 and the 17 counts of murder that Sergeant Bales is facing.

Afghan government compensation payments of $2,000 for each death and $1,000 for each person wounded were made in the days after the attack.

Meanwhile, seven Afghan police officers, an American soldier and an Afghan interpreter were killed on Saturday when their foot patrol was struck by a hidden bomb in a district north of the city of Kandahar, Zalmai Ayoubi, a spokesman for the provincial government, said on Sunday.

Mr. Ayoubi said the victims were part of a joint patrol of Afghan police officers and American soldiers that was headed to a village in the Arghandab district, where, according to a tip that had been received that morning, a cache of land mines and bombs had been hidden.

The American-led coalition said in a statement on Saturday that one of its service members had been killed in southern Afghanistan but did not provide details.

Arghandab was one of the areas near Kandahar that was the focus of the 2010 surge of American forces. Although the Taliban have been pushed back, insurgents remain active in the area.

Afghan killings ‘were by team of US soldiers’

“In four rooms people were killed, children and women were killed, and then they were all brought together in one room and then put on fire; that one man cannot do.”

gulf-times.com | Mar 19, 2012

 

Afghan children look out of their temporary shelter at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Kabul yesterday. Four hundred people are displaced daily in the Afghan conflict and face hunger and destitution, Amnesty International said. At least 30,000 displaced Afghans live in more than 30 camps in Kabul alone and are now enduring the worst winter the mountainous capital has seen in 17 years

Kabul – A shooting spree in Afghanistan that left 16 civilians dead a week ago was the work of a team of US soldiers, not an individual as has been reported, a member of the Afghan parliamentary investigative team said yesterday.

“After our investigations, we came to know that the killings were not carried out by one single soldier. More than a dozen soldiers went, killed the villagers and then burnt the bodies,” lawmaker Naheem Lalai Hameedzai claimed.

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But that account conflicts with statements from US officials, as well as with separate testimony from some people present during the attacks.

Hameedzai said the results of the probe by lawmakers has been presented to the legislature.

He also said the Afghan parliament had urged President Hamid Karzai to change the legal status of foreign soldiers deployed in the war-torn country.

The US has said one soldier carried out the dawn attack on a village in Panjwai district in Kandahar province. That soldier – identified as Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, 38 – is now in US military custody.

“All the villagers that we talked to said there were 15 to 20 men (who) had conducted a night raid operation in several areas in the village,” said Hameedzai.

“One house where the incident took place is located in a village north of the base. The other two are in another village in the south of the base. There is at least 4kms between the base and the houses.”

Hameedzai also said some of the Afghan women who were killed were sexually assaulted, according to the findings.

“According to eyewitnesses, they could not confirm the rape. But the women’s clothes were torn,” he said.

However, Kandahar governor’s media office said local elders refuted the claim, saying the lawmaker was “lying for political gains.”

Meanwhile, the parliament in Kabul urged Karzai to revoke an agreement that protects foreign troops in the country from facing legal proceedings in Afghanistan.

“During our investigations, the Americans themselves told us that, because Afghanistan signed the military agreement, US soldiers could not be tried inside the country,” parliamentarian Naheem Lalai Hameedzai said.

“We have passed a resolution unanimously to dissolve the military contract, and we have sent the resolution to President Karzai. He has not signed on it yet,” Hameedzai said.

“After the Panjwai incident, we have decided that we do not need any such contracts any more,” he said.

Is the U.S. covering for additional troops involved in Afghan massacre?

End the Lie | Mar 18, 2012

By Madison Ruppert

Rumors and eyewitness accounts have been circulating since the news first broke of the massacre of Afghan civilians, including women and children, which left 16 dead.

Most of these focus on casting doubt on the American account of a lone wolf gunman acting completely on his own without the involvement of any other soldiers.

However, it is not pure rumor; indeed a probe conducted by the Afghan parliament determined that up to 20 American troops were involved in the killing.

According to Pajhwok Afghan News, the nine-member parliamentary probe spent two days in the southern Kandahar province conducting interviews with the families of the victims, tribal elders, as well as survivors while collecting evidence at the site of the brutal slayings in the Panjwai district.

Hamidzai Lali, a lawmaker representing the Kandahar province at the Wolesi Jirga, told Pajhwok Afghan News, that their probe concluded that there were anywhere between 15 to 20 American soldiers involved in the murders.

“We closely examined the site of the incident, talked to the families who lost their beloved ones, the injured people and tribal elders,” he said.

Lali stated that the attack lasted an entire hour and involved two different groups of American soldiers.

“The villages are one and a half kilometer[s] from the American military base. We are convinced that one soldier cannot kill so many people in two villages within one hour at the same time, and the 16 civilians, most of them children and women, have been killed by the two groups,” he said.

Lali has called for the Afghan government along with the United Nations and the rest of the international community to make sure that those who were responsible for the killings are brought to justice in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, that looks almost entirely unlikely due to the fact that the soldier allegedly responsible for the killing spree has already been returned to Kansas, far out of the reach of the Afghan government.

Lali expressed anger with the fact that the soldier was flown out of Afghanistan, although at the time of his comments he was in Kuwait, whereas now he is all the way back in the United States.

He issued a somewhat grave warning from the people that they had met with concerning the massacre.

Lali stated that if those troops who were responsible were not punished, they would launch a movement in opposition to the Afghans who had agreed to the presence of foreign soldiers during the first Bonn conference back in 2001.

According to Lali, the Wolesi Jirga – Afghanistan’s “Assembly of the People,” the lower house of the Afghan parliament – will not stop their quest for justice until the killers were prosecuted in Afghanistan.

Of course, the United States is wholly opposed to subjecting American troops to the laws of the countries in which they operate, as this would open many soldiers up to criminal prosecution for their activities.

“If the international community does not play its role in punishing the perpetrators, the Wolesi Jirga would declare foreign troops as occupying forces, like the Russians,” Lali warned.

As I reported last year, polls have shown that the majority of the people in Afghanistan already see the foreign troops as occupying forces, and I bet that if I lived there I would feel exactly the same.

Even as an outsider, I find our sustained presence and the murder of Afghans that comes with it wholly deplorable, unnecessary and unacceptable.

The American military seeks to keep their soldiers as immune as possible when it comes to prosecution in foreign lands, in order to enable brutal activities which are likely illegal under the domestic law of the nations they are operating in.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been making some heated statements and demands, although it now appears that these may be nothing more than an attempt to pacify the rightfully angered people of Afghanistan.

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