None of the US troops involved in a drone strike that killed 10 civilians in Afghanistan will be punished: report
Ryan Pickrell | Publié le
- In late August, the US carried out a drone strike that killed 10 civilians, including a number of children.
- An investigation into the strike found no misconduct but left the door open for possible punishments.
- No one involved in the strike will be punished, The New York Times reported Monday.
No one involved in a drone strike that mistakenly killed 10 civilians, including children, will be punished, The New York Times reported Monday , citing a senior Pentagon official.
Two top commanders — Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, who leads Central Command, and Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the head of the Special Operations Command — recommended none of the military personnel involved be penalized.
Their recommendations were accepted by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, The Times reported .
On August 29, just days after terrorists bombed a gate at the airport in Kabul, killing 13 US service members and many more Afghans amid evacuations, the US military conducted what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said was a "righteous strike" on what was thought to be a terrorist target.
On September 10, as the US military claimed it had averted another potentially deadly attack, The New York Times reported that the vehicle the drone struck belonged to an aid worker, not an ISIS fighter, and that the strike had killed nearly a dozen civilians.
A week later, the US military publicly acknowledged that an investigation into the drone strike had confirmed the report from The Times . "I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians, including up to 7 children, were tragically killed," Gen. McKenzie said.
He told reporters at the Pentagon that while there was "reasonable certainty at the time of the strike to designate the vehicle as an 'imminent threat,'" the investigation concluded "that this was a tragic mistake."
The general added that the strike "did not come up to our standards" and that "clearly the intelligence was wrong."
In November, Lt. Gen. Sami Said, the Air Force inspector general who had been tasked with conducting an independent investigation of the deadly strike, said he did not find any misconduct or "violations of law or the law of war ."
Said blamed the botched strike on misguided assumptions and confirmation bias.
Though that investigation did not find any specific fault with any individual service member or recommend that anyone be penalized for their actions, the possibility of some form of administrative action was left on the table.
The latest report from The New York Times reveals that the US military has decided it will not be taking any steps to punish anyone for the tragic strike, one of many during the war in Afghanistan that resulted in civilian casualties.
Via PakApNews