Canadian soldiers kill innocent person in retalliation for all the accidents

[sonz]

Afghan family cries for fallen father


KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN-Semem Gul slaps at her face and thrashes at her chest. Her keening rises to a fever pitch, echoing off the crumbing mud walls of the courtyard, spilling into the narrow alleys of Shahidan Chawk, one of the city's most impoverished neighbourhoods.

She is now, because of an unidentified Canadian soldier, a widow in Afghanistan, and there's no worse fate for a woman in this country.
"I don't have a husband! I have nobody to protect me! What am I to do?
"You say sorry? What does sorry mean to me? Will sorry feed my children?"
The youngest of those six children, Shahab, adds his pitiful mewling to the sobbing in the room, where a dozen of Semen Gul's female relatives have gathered, rocking and swaying with grief.

Shahab, only 4 years old, was in the motorized rickshaw when his father, Nasrat Ali, was shot in the chest - a fatal wound, as it turned out -by a Canadian infantryman on patrol late Tuesday night.
The child himself fell out of the small vehicle in the panic that ensued, and there are abrasions on his forehead.

"Is my father not coming home?" the uncomprehending youngster asks a Toronto Star reporter who has been invited into the single-room household, the only journalist the widow has agreed to see.

Shahab's sisters, 11 and 14, weep as they gather the boy in their arms. An older brother, the man of the family now at age 22, looks on, an impotent rage darkening his features.

Nasrat Ali, a poor Shiite who barely eked out an existence making tin pots and pans, had just been buried after his corpse was ritualistically washed by relatives. More than 1,000 mourners had attended the funeral at Amam Bargah mosque — the imam counselled against violence and retribution.Nasrat Ali's photograph, photocopied, has been posted throughout the mosque compound — a handsome man, clean-shaven in what looks like it might have been an official ID, perhaps something from a passport.
"Look, no beard," a relative points out. "Not Taliban, not Al Qaeda. Just Afghan."

Whether justifiable or not, a Canadian soldier has taken the life of what was palpably an innocent civilian, an Afghan who had returned to his country only three years ago after living for nearly two decades in neighbouring Iran. As Shiite exiles, the Ali family fled Soviet occupation, warlords, the Taliban, finally coming home after the U.S.-led coalition put a Pashtun leader in the presidential palace.

They thought it was safe now.
They were tragically wrong.

"I know the Canadians are here to help," says Semen Gul, composing herself, speaking through an interpreter. "I don't hate Canadians. But I can't forgive them. You cannot come to our country and kill us."

The widow is surely entitled to compensation for the loss of a husband and father, aged 45. When pressed, she names a figure: $30,000 (U.S.) "Enough to buy a house and a shop for my eldest son.''

An independent agency, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, is examining the incident to determine whether compensation is merited, and the soldier who fired the fatal shot has been removed from duties pending the outcome.

But what's become obvious is that there are two wildly different versions of the events that transpired at about 11 p.m. Tuesday night, as the Ali family was coming home from dinner at the home of a relative.

Canadian commanders assert that the rickshaw taxi in which the victim was travelling ignored repeated and explicit warnings — shouts, hand gestures and a spotlight trained on the vehicle — to stop, and was shot upon when less than a metre from a patrol parked at the side of the road. They also said the vehicle had blown past an Afghan checkpoint just before approaching the patrol at speed.

Semen Gul and her children insist that's not the way it happened at all.
There were seven people in the rickshaw, she said, six family members (including a daughter-in-law and her baby) and the driver, while oldest son Farid Ahmed followed behind on his bicycle.

The rickshaw, moving slowly — it's maximum speed is 20 km/h — was just coming around the sharp curve of a spoked road that leads into one of Kandahar's major roundabouts, said Gul. From that angle, as the Star confirmed after visiting the scene, the driver would not have seen the parked patrol until it was about 15 metres away.

The Afghan checkpoint, however, is apparently moved in the evenings from the centre of the roundabout to the entry-point of the two roads leading into it, and allegedly all vehicles are checked after 9 p.m.

"I lived for many years in Iran. I know all about police checkpoints," said Gul, 40. "We were not stopped by the Afghans. And there was no warning shot from the Canadians, no shouting, no shots fired in the air, no light shining on us. There was only this sudden gunfire — three shots — and my husband falling out of the rickshaw into the street."

Lieut. Derek Basinger, chief of staff for Task Force Afghanistan, told reporters on Wednesday that a medic on the vehicle had immediately examined the victim, that the wound did not look life-threatening, and that Afghan police quickly arrived, removing Nasrat Ali to hospital.

Gul says the medic didn't come out of the patrol vehicle for 15 minutes, while her husband — still conscious — lay bleeding in the road; that the Canadians troops ignored family pleas that Nasrat Ali be taken right away to hospital. "I was begging, please, take him to the American hospital. They wouldn't do it."
Afghan police, when they finally arrived, put her husband in a second rickshaw for the trip to the hospital, leaving her behind, Gul added.
Nasrat Ali was not armed. There were no weapons or explosives in the rickshaw.

However, threats against multinational troops — particularly in Kandahar province, whence the routed Taliban originally arose — have increased sharply and Canadian troops here are clearly bracing for more attacks from insurgents.
Yesterday, fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar purportedly sent a statement to the Associated Press, promising that a large number of Afghans were signing up as suicide bombers

"This year, with the beginning of summer, Afghan soil will turn red for the crusaders and their puppets and the occupiers will face an unpredictable wave of Afghan resistance," the statement read.

Reminded of the danger for the troops, Semen Gul shook her head.
"You think we are all Taliban or Al Qaeda. Could they have not fired at the tires or the sky? If there had been a warning, we would have stopped, of course, we would have stopped. It would be stupid not to stop.
"They do not have the right to shoot at Afghans. Let them shoot at people in their own country, not here."

Last night, after repeated requests from media, Maj. Scott Lundy, spokesperson for the multinational brigade, made a brief statement essentially re-asserting the military version of events — based on information given by soldiers in the patrol — and refusing to speculate on the divergent recollection of the civilians involved.

"I think it's fair to say there will be some Afghans living in Kandahar city who will be concerned ... It's the normal reaction to a death. As far as we're concerned, it's regrettable. But again, we would hope that the public will understand that there were ... a lot of factors involved and the decision of the crew to take the actions it did, that was done pretty much at the spur of the moment.

"So now we'll let the investigation determine how all of this played out."
Earlier in the day, Maj. Erik Liebert, deputy commanding officer of the Provincial Reconstruction Team — a satellite of Task Force Afghanistan located on the outskirts of Kandahar city, from which the patrol had emerged — said Canadian military authorities would be contacting the victim's family within the next day or so "to express our condolence and possibly arrange for a small gift, if that's appropriate in the cultural circumstances."
The formal mourning period for Nasrat Ali — called a fatha — will conclude tomorrow.

Yesterday afternoon, when the Star's van fell in behind another Canadian patrol travelling through downtown Kandahar, a soldier riding in the back of the vehicle could be seen draining a bottle of water and then pinging the plastic container off the head of a young Afghan male walking along the street. "You see," an Afghan in the car pointed out. "You see how they treat us?"

[MinAhlilHadeeth]

:sl:
That is so sad. And what's even sadder, is that the worst stories probably haven't reached us. Only Allah can end this opression, may He make it come with speed, ameen.
:w:

[Malsidabym]

The title of this thread is very misleading to the actual truth. Do you think that the canadian soldier that pulled the trigger was "retaliating" to accidents that happened?