The alleged head of a rogue US army unit accused of murdering Afghan civilians for sport appeared in court Tuesday as gruesome details of a killing spree emerged.
Facing a pre-trial military hearing, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs is accused of leading the attacks in southern Afghanistan earlier this year, involving around a dozen soldiers, in which the victims' bodies were allegedly mutilated.
If proved in a full court martial, the crimes would be among the worst crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan and could deal a blow to efforts to win over the support of ordinary Afghans in the war-torn country.
Gibbs, appearing for the first time in court, sat quietly between two defense attorneys as investigating officer Colonel Thomas Molloy read the charges.
He faces three counts of premeditated murder of Afghan civilians, along with related charges, including conspiracy to commit murder, impeding an investigation, and dereliction of duty.
"Sergeant Gibbs, do you understand what you are charged with?" asked Molloy.
"Yes, sir," replied Gibbs.
Prosecutors say Gibbs, 26, led four other soldiers in killing Afghans for sport over several months in Kandahar province. The soldiers were members of the so-called Stryker Brigade at the frontline Forward Operating Base Ramrod.
Gibbs is also accused of assaulting another soldier, named Tuesday as Justin Stoner, on May 5 for blowing the whistle on the killings.
Testifying by speakerphone from Afghanistan, army investigator Anderson Wagner said he first heard that something was amiss with the Stryker brigade when he probed Stoner's assault.
In the beginning, he was told Stoner had complained about other soldiers in the unit smoking hashish, said Wagner.
But then Stoner told him about an incident when another Stryker brigade member showed him finger bones and "told him that if he didn't want to end up like that guy, he better keep his mouth shut about everything that's going on."
That's when Stoner mentioned questionable killings and made allegations about Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 22, of Wasilla, Alaska — who faces a full court martial after initial pre-trial hearings in September.
Morlock initially did not want to talk, but eventually "told us he was involved with two murders, with Sgt. Gibbs as the ringleader," said Wagner.
Morlock went on to say that Gibbs would invent scenarios in which he and other members of the unit could kill people and get away with it, according to Wagner.
In May Gibbs allegedly threw a grenade at an Afghan civilian man, and Morlock and Specialist Adam Winfield, another member of the unit, then fired rifles at him.
After the man was dead, Morlock claimed in the interview, the soldiers planted a Russian-style grenade on the body, said Wagner.
Gibbs's defense attorney Phillip Stackhouse noted Morlock was an admitted drug user. But Wagner replied: "If I did think he was too intoxicated or not in his right mind, we would not have interviewed him at that point."
Stackhouse also questioned the thoroughness of the investigations into the killings, asking if DNA tests had been done on a cigarette found with fingers alleged to have come from one of Gibbs' victims.
Wagner said he did not believe the army had a DNA sample from Gibbs that would allow for such a comparison.
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