KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan lawmakers expressed anger Thursday that the United States flew an American soldier accused of killing 16 civilians to Kuwait, saying Kabul shouldn’t sign a strategic partnership agreement with Washington unless the suspect faces justice in Afghanistan.
Negotiations over the agreement, which would govern the presence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan after most combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014, were tense even before the shooting deaths of the civilians, including nine children, in southern Kandahar province on Sunday.
The killings came in the wake of violent protests last month triggered by American soldiers who burned Korans and other Islamic texts. More than 30 people were killed in those demonstrations, and Afghan forces turned their guns on their supposed allies, killing six U.S. soldiers.
The public response to the shooting spree has been much more muted, partly because senior Afghan officials have used their influence to persuade citizens not to hold demonstrations.
The U.S. flew the suspect out of the country on Wednesday evening, U.S. officials said. The U.S. military said the transfer did not preclude the possibility of trying the case in Afghanistan.
But that didn’t appease Afghans upset at the move.
“It was the demand of the families of the martyrs of this incident, the people of Kandahar and the people of Afghanistan to try him publicly in Afghanistan,” said Mohammad Naeem Lalai Hamidzai, a Kandahar lawmaker who is part of a parliamentary commission investigating the shootings.
The U.S. informed Afghan leaders that the soldier was going to be moved, and “they understood,” said U.S. Lt. Gen. Curtis Scaparotti, deputy commander of American forces in Afghanistan. Moving the suspect will allow the U.S. to provide pretrial confinement, access to legal representation and the ability to ensure fair and proper judicial proceedings, he said.
Afghan government officials have not responded to a request for comment on the transfer.
The Pentagon has said the U.S. does not have appropriate detention facilities in Afghanistan.
In Kuwait, Lt. Col. David Patterson, a U.S. Army spokesman, said Thursday that the detention unit there, known as a Theater Field Confinement Facility, holds pretrial detainees and post-trial confinees for a limited amount of time.
He would not confirm any further details about the case.
The Kuwait detention facilities have been used for other U.S. troops. The most prominent detainee recently was Army PFC Bradley Manning, who was held there after he was taken into custody in Baghdad in 2010 for allegedly leaking government documents in the WikiLeaks case.
Abdul Khaliq Balakarzai, another Kandahar lawmaker, said President Hamid Karzai should respond to the U.S. decision to move the soldier by refusing to sign the strategic partnership agreement.
“If the trial was in Afghanistan, the people would see that America doesn’t like this soldier and wants to punish him,” Mr. Balakarzai said, “but unfortunately, America ignored our demand.”
Haji Abdul Ghani, a tribal elder from the area of Panjwai district where the shooting spree occurred, warned that the U.S. move would cause “people to rise up and increase the hostility between Afghanistan and America.”
Members of a high-level delegation sent by Mr. Karzai to investigate the killings largely have prevented demonstrations so far by calling tribal leaders and urging them to calm down locals, said Afghan officials and villagers.
There has only been one significant protest since the killings. About 1,000 students demonstrated Tuesday in the eastern city of Jalalabad, shouting anti-American slogans and burning an effigy of President Obama.
U.S. officials have expressed shock and sadness over Sunday’s killings and have promised a thorough investigation. But they have resisted calls both at home and in Afghanistan to speed up the withdrawal of American troops in the wake of the tragedy.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta visited Afghanistan on Wednesday, the first American official to visit the country since the shootings.
As his plane was about to land at a British airfield in the country’s south, an Afghan man attempted to ram a stolen truck into a group of U.S. Marines at a ramp, then crashed it and exited the vehicle in flames.
Gen. Scaparotti, the deputy U.S. commander, told reporters traveling with Mr. Panetta in Kabul that he believed the man — an interpreter working for foreign forces — had tried to attack the Marines and that it would have been difficult for him to know which plane the defense secretary was aboard.
Mr. Panetta told reporters he doesn’t believe he was the target. He was told on the plane that it was being diverted to another landing site but he was not aware of the truck incident until later. No one in Mr. Panetta’s party was hurt.
The man who stole the vehicle died Thursday of extensive burns, Gen. Scaparotti said. Authorities were not able to talk to or get any information from him before he died.
A U.S. military official said a British soldier was injured when he tried to stop the man from stealing the truck on the base. The Afghan man hit the British soldier with the truck as he was driving away. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident is still being investigated.
A military dog at the airfield chased the speeding truck and is believed to have suffered minor burns while trying to pull the driver out of the vehicle, according to a U.S. defense official.
The U.S. Army staff sergeant accused of carrying out the shooting spree in Kandahar has been identified as a married, 38-year-old father of two who was trained as a sniper and served three tours in Iraq, where he recently suffered a head injury.
The U.S. has not released his name partly because of security concerns for the individual and his family, Gen. Scaparotti said.
The U.S. soldier allegedly slipped out of his small base in southern Afghanistan before dawn Sunday, crept into three houses and shot men, women and children at close range, then burned some of the bodies. By sunrise, there were 16 corpses.
The suspect was taken into custody shortly afterward.
The soldier’s trial is not the only point of contention in the case. The U.S. has said the killings were carried out by a single shooter, but some Afghan officials and local villagers have insisted that at least two soldiers were involved.
On Thursday, 13 civilians, including nine children and four women, were killed when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in southern Uruzgan province, police spokesman Fareed Ilayal said.
Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann and Lolita C. Baldor in Kabul, Mirwais Khan in Kandahar, Kathy Gannon in Islamabad and Adam Schreck in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
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