Exclusive: U.S. soldier faces trial for Afghan civilian murder

[Ichingcarpenter]

Source: reuters

(Reuters) - Yar Mohammad was in Iran one afternoon last September when his electrician father was taken from his home in an Afghan village by U.S. and Afghan soldiers, beaten in a school bathroom and then shot in the head.

By the time he returned the funeral was over, but neighbors had saved cellphone pictures of the bloodied concrete where they said Atta Mohammad spent his last minutes, and of the battered body being carried to his grave.

They told Yar Mohammad, who worked as a laborer in Iran, about the sound of a single deadly shot ringing out through the village.

A U.S. soldier now faces trial for pulling the trigger, but Atta's family, part of the vast rural Afghan population whose support is vital to turning the tide in a decade-long war against Islamist insurgents, say they have been given no compensation and little sense of justice.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/23/us-afghanistan-civilian-idUSTRE71M1C420110223