09-02-2022, 03:21 PM
By Sandi Sidhu, Julia Hollingsworth, Anna Coren, Abdul Basir Bina and Ahmet Mengli, CNN
Updated 0219 GMT (1019 HKT) September 15, 2021
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN)To the United States military, he was an ISIS-K facilitator they feared was involved in a plot to attack Kabul's international airport.
To his family and colleagues at a US nonprofit, 43-year-old Zamarai Ahmadi was an aid worker applying for a US visa to get his family out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
In the two weeks since US drone operatives fired a Hellfire missile at a car in a residential Kabul compound, two vastly different narratives have emerged about the man who his family say died alongside nine relatives.
The Pentagon maintains at least one ISIS-K facilitator was killed in what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley called a "righteous strike" on the compound on August 29.
In a statement, US Central Command pointed to "significant secondary explosions" as evidence of a "substantial amount of explosive material" in the vehicle.
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But CNN interviews with two explosive experts and more than two dozen of Ahmadi's relatives, colleagues and neighbors raise questions about whether an ISIS-K facilitator was killed in the attack and whether the car contained explosives.
Their accounts also prompt doubts over whether the military had sufficient intelligence to launch a strike that, according to family, would ultimately kill three men with visa pathways to the US and seven children aged 15 and under.
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Two experts who reviewed extensive footage filmed on the scene by CNN say the scene is consistent with the aftermath of a Hellfire strike, but both say there is no evidence of one "significant secondary explosion" -- let alone multiple blasts.
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the US official, who claimed the secondary blast was four to five times larger than the initial explosion.
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an international explosives engineer, who asked not to be named for professional reasons and who viewed CNN video of the scene, said there was no evidence whatsoever of a secondary explosion four or five times larger than the initial explosion.
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"On the evidence that has been presented, the United States government is grasping at straws," the engineer said.
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William Boothby, an international humanitarian law expert who wrote a book on the law of targeting, said states are required to do all that was feasible to verify the status of their target as lawful. But failing to take proper precautions isn't a war crime under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court -- and regardless, the US isn't a party to the statute, Boothby said.
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But while the strike might not be illegal, it raises moral questions. The US has previously shown a "level of negligence" in distinguishing civilians from targets, and was often slow to admit to civilian casualties or pay compensation
Long full report at: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/14/asia/...index.html
Updated 0219 GMT (1019 HKT) September 15, 2021
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN)To the United States military, he was an ISIS-K facilitator they feared was involved in a plot to attack Kabul's international airport.
To his family and colleagues at a US nonprofit, 43-year-old Zamarai Ahmadi was an aid worker applying for a US visa to get his family out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
In the two weeks since US drone operatives fired a Hellfire missile at a car in a residential Kabul compound, two vastly different narratives have emerged about the man who his family say died alongside nine relatives.
The Pentagon maintains at least one ISIS-K facilitator was killed in what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley called a "righteous strike" on the compound on August 29.
In a statement, US Central Command pointed to "significant secondary explosions" as evidence of a "substantial amount of explosive material" in the vehicle.
......
But CNN interviews with two explosive experts and more than two dozen of Ahmadi's relatives, colleagues and neighbors raise questions about whether an ISIS-K facilitator was killed in the attack and whether the car contained explosives.
Their accounts also prompt doubts over whether the military had sufficient intelligence to launch a strike that, according to family, would ultimately kill three men with visa pathways to the US and seven children aged 15 and under.
......
Two experts who reviewed extensive footage filmed on the scene by CNN say the scene is consistent with the aftermath of a Hellfire strike, but both say there is no evidence of one "significant secondary explosion" -- let alone multiple blasts.
......
the US official, who claimed the secondary blast was four to five times larger than the initial explosion.
......
an international explosives engineer, who asked not to be named for professional reasons and who viewed CNN video of the scene, said there was no evidence whatsoever of a secondary explosion four or five times larger than the initial explosion.
......
"On the evidence that has been presented, the United States government is grasping at straws," the engineer said.
......
William Boothby, an international humanitarian law expert who wrote a book on the law of targeting, said states are required to do all that was feasible to verify the status of their target as lawful. But failing to take proper precautions isn't a war crime under the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court -- and regardless, the US isn't a party to the statute, Boothby said.
......
But while the strike might not be illegal, it raises moral questions. The US has previously shown a "level of negligence" in distinguishing civilians from targets, and was often slow to admit to civilian casualties or pay compensation
Long full report at: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/14/asia/...index.html
