Pentagon Won't Court Martial Soldiers Who Killed 42 in Bombing of Afghan Hospital
A Pentagon investigation has found that war crimes were not committed last October when a United States aerial gunship killed 42 civilians during an accidental airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders medical charity hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
Army Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, said at a news conference on Friday that the "tragedy" was a result of errors that led 16 U.S. service members to believe they were bombarding a Taliban command center last Oct. 3.
"They were trying to do the right thing. They were trying to support our Afghan partners," Votel explained. "Unfortunately, they made a wrong judgment in this particular case and ended up targeting this Doctors Without Borders facility."
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Although innocent civilians died as a result of the troops "wrong judgement," Votel said the incident will not be labeled a war crime because the airstrike was not intentional.
"The label 'war crimes' is typically reserved for intentional acts — intentional targeting (of) civilians or intentionally targeting protected objects or locations," Votel emphasized. "Again, the investigation found that the incident resulted from a combination of unintentional human errors, process errors and equipment failures, and that none of the personnel knew they were striking a hospital."
Although the civilian hospital was on a U.S. military no-strike list, Votel reasoned that the service members did not have access to the list because the mission was launched on such short notice that the no-strike list had not been loaded into the plane's onboard systems.
Votel said the 16 service members involved in the deadly mistake have been disciplined with either letters of reprimand or formal counseling. None of the service members involved have been court martialed.
The 16 disciplined service members, who were not named, included officers and a two-star general, The Chicago Tribune reports.
Despite killing civilians, The Washington Post points out that the punishments doled out to the service members are not likely career ending.
Human Rights Watch Asia Policy Director Josh Sifton told the Post that the punishments are nothing more than an "insult to the dead."
"The Pentagon public affairs office can try to spin 'counseling' and 'letters of reprimand' as devastating and career-ending for implicated personnel," Sifton said. "But the MSF attack ended people's very lives, and devastated the families and survivors of those who were killed."
After President Barack Obama issued an apology following the airstrike, the medical charity's leaders said his apology did not go far enough, and called for an international investigation into the incident.
Along with the Pentagon's investigation, NATO and Afghanistan have also launched investigations into the incident.
The Pentagon's announcement comes after a Doctors Without Borders-supported hospital in Syria was bombarded by airstrike earlier this week, which killed as many as 50 people. Secretary of State John Kerry said the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is likely to blame.
"We are outraged by yesterday's airstrikes in Aleppo on the al Quds hospital supported by both Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee of the Red Cross, which killed dozens of people, including children, patients and medical personnel," Kerry said in a statement. "It appears to have been a deliberate strike on a known medical facility and follows the Assad regime's appalling record of striking such facilities and first responders. These strikes have killed hundreds of innocent Syrians."
