IHT : Army will examine Special Forces killing

Army will examine Special Forces killing

By Paul von Zielbauer | September 17, 2007

FORT BRAGG, North Carolina: From his position about 100 yards away, Master Sergeant Troy Anderson had a clear shot of the Afghan man standing outside a residential compound in a small village near the Pakistan border last October. And when Captain Dave Staffel, the Special Forces officer in charge, gave the order to shoot, Anderson fired a single bullet into the man's head, killing him instantly.

In June, Staffel and Anderson were charged with premeditated murder. On Tuesday, in a rare public examination of the rules that govern the actions of special operations troops in Afghanistan, a military hearing will convene at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to weigh the evidence against the two Green Berets.

The case revolves around two apparently contradictory views of the victim, Nawab Buntangyar, and the American military's guidelines for dealing with high-level enemy fighters.

To the Special Forces soldiers and their 12-man detachment, the shooting, near the village of Hasan Kheyl last October, was a textbook example of a classified mission completed in accordance with the American rules of engagement. The men said such rules allowed them to kill Buntangyar, whom the American military had designated a terrorist cell leader, once they positively identified him.

But to the two-star general in charge of the American special operations troops in Afghanistan at the time, Frank Kearney, the episode appeared to be an unauthorized, illegal killing. In June, after a preliminary investigation by an Army colonel, Kearney moved to have Staffel and Anderson - respectively, the junior commissioned and senior noncommissioned officers of Operational Detachment Alpha, Third Battalion, Third Special Forces Group - charged with murder.

The soldiers' case also highlights the intense scrutiny that Kearney, who also investigated an elite Marine unit accused of killing several civilians in eastern Afghanistan last March, has given to the actions of some of the most highly trained American troops fighting Taliban and insurgent forces in the region.

Mark Waple, a civilian lawyer for Staffel, said an investigation by the Army's Criminal Investigation Command concluded in April that the shooting was "justifiable homicide," and that Kearney, as the major general commanding all American special operations troops in Afghanistan at the time, proceeded with murder charges against the two soldiers anyway.

Kearney was promoted in July to lieutenant general and made deputy commander, United States Special Operations Command. A spokesman for Special Forces command at Fort Bragg declined to comment on the shooting or the charges, as did Lieutenant Colonel Lou Leto, the spokesman for Kearney's previous command, where the murder charges originated.