Details of the gruesome crimes in Afghanistan that have resulted in 12 U.S. Army soldiers facing trial at a base near Seattle have been slowly making their way into the public domain. Dozens of photos to be introduced as evidence in the case allegedly show men from a self-styled “kill team” accused of murdering Afghan civilians for sport posing beside charred and mutilated bodies, from which fingers and a head were allegedly severed as trophies. One soldier, who was said to have boasted of similar killings in Iraq, allegedly added a skull tattoo to his left leg for each new victim. Another spoke with chilling candor on camera to military investigators about choosing targets at random. But absent from the narrative until now has been the voices of the victims’ families, some of whom witnessed the killings in villages near the U.S. base in the Taliban stronghold of Maiwand district. Security conditions in the area have thwarted efforts by military investigators and Afghan rights groups to learn more from the crime scenes. But after several weeks of trying to make contact, TIME was able to interview several family members about the events of those grim days between January and May.
One of the victims, Mullah Allah Dad, was said to have been the imam, or religious leader, of Qala Gai village, some four miles from Forward Operating Base Ramrod, where the accused soldiers, who were part of the 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, were stationed. According to his wife, who asked not to be named and relayed her story through her father, Dad, said to be in his early 40s, had just returned to the family compound from tending his fields on the morning of May 2 when the American soldiers arrived, and dragged him outside. She and their six children were inside the mud-brick compound. Peering through a crack in the wall, she says she heard a volley of gunshots and saw her husband fall to the ground, into view. “I didn’t know if he was dead or alive,” she says. Soldiers then barged back inside and moved her into a room. Some of them searched the home, throwing furniture and belongings to the floor. As they exited, an Afghan translator ordered her not to leave and locked the door. There was a loud explosion; one of the two accused soldiers apparently exploded a grenade by Dad’s body. His wife emerged to find her dead husband lying face down “naked and totally burned.”
The dead man’s father-in-law, Abdullah Jan, went to the Maiwand district office early that afternoon to retrieve Dad’s remains. He said the local district official and intelligence director presented him with a black body bag and said they had taken pictures, adding, without remorse, that the killing was justified because an American soldier had told them: “This man [Dad] was carrying a grenade.” After disputing that claim to no avail, he left with the body bag and went back to the village to conduct an immediate burial, as required by Islamic tradition.
