Officers Face Reprimands in Burning of Taliban Fighters' Bodies - New York Times

Officers Face Reprimands in Burning of Taliban Fighters' Bodies - New York Times

Officers Face Reprimands in Burning of Taliban Fighters' Bodies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Nov. 26 (AP) - Four American soldiers face disciplinary action but no criminal charges after an inquiry into the burning of two Taliban corpses and their later use in the taunting of other guerrillas, an American military commander said on Saturday.

The operational commander of the American-led forces here, Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, said two junior officers who had ordered the bodies burned for what they said were hygienic reasons would be reprimanded for showing a lack of cultural and religious understanding. He said the officers were unaware that Islamic tenets ban cremation and consider the burning of human bodies to be a desecration.

General Kamiya also said two noncommissioned officers who later used a loudspeaker to harangue nearby Taliban rebels while standing over the bodies would be disciplined. They face nonjudicial punishments, typically a loss of pay or demotion.

In Kabul, the Afghan capital, the Swedish military and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said that a Swedish soldier had died from wounds received on Friday in a roadside bomb blast in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The blast wounded three other Swedish peacekeepers and two civilians.

Afghan officials reported that Taliban fighters burned a district police headquarters in Logar Province on Saturday and abducted four officers.

The investigation into the burning of the bodies was prompted by a report on Australian television last month. Video images made by Stephen Dupont, a freelance journalist who was accompanying an American unit near the village of Gonbaz, showed soldiers standing by two smoldering bodies after a clash in which an American and an Afghan soldier were also killed.

General Kamiya said that the investigation "found there was no intent to desecrate the remains but only to dispose of them for hygienic reasons," and that the taunts, while "designed to incite fleeing Taliban to fight," violated military policy but not "the rules of war."

The governor of Kandahar, Asadullah Khalid, attended the general's news conference and said afterward, "We have confidence in this investigation."