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Kandahar shootings: Youngest survivors recall night of terror

November 11, 2012|By Kim Murphy
  • Hekmatullah "Khan" Gul, whose father was killed in the Kandahar shootings, testified at a hearing for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales.
Hekmatullah "Khan" Gul, whose father was killed in the Kandahar…








Zardana was followed at Saturday's military pretrial hearing by three other young survivors of the shootings: Robina, also 7; Hekmatullah “Khan” Gul, 10; and Rafiullah, who is in his mid-teens.

All three calmly gave detailed accounts of how their relatives were felled by gunfire as Bales, a 39-year-old veteran of four combat deployments, stared at the video screen without expression.

Robina, wearing a deep red scarf and talking animatedly as she folded her fingers together, described how she hid behind her father for protection, only to get hit by a bullet when he was shot.

“My father … was cursing the person as he was coming in the house. Then they shot my father right through the throat and the chest,” she said. “At the same time, the bullet penetrated my body, and hit me in the leg.”

Rafiullah, Zardana’s brother, said the two of them were staying with their grandmother and younger sibling when the gunman entered, a blazing light on his gun, and pointed his pistol at his sister.


Most of the children were queried about whether more than one soldier was present during the attacks — a reference to claims by some villagers that at least two, and possibly more, U.S. soldiers were seen on the night of the killings.

Robina insisted she had seen “a lot of lights” outside the family compound. “It almost made it like daylight,” she said. “There were too many lights.”

In an earlier interview with the Los Angeles Times, Hikmatullah Gul, who usually goes by “Khan,” said two U.S. soldiers were in the room where his father, Mohammad Dawud, was killed in front of his family.

“One held my father, and one shot him,” he said in that interview.

On the witness stand Saturday, Khan didn’t repeat that assertion but did say he saw something outside. “There was light outside and there were soldiers,” he said.

Army criminal investigations agent Leona Mansapit testified that Dawud’s wife, Masuma, told her that two U.S. soldiers had entered her home. One led her husband out the door. As she tried to follow, another pushed her back and then grabbed on to her husband.

“The other soldier had a pistol to his head, and pulled the trigger and shot him,” Mansapit said she was told by the widow, who so far has not testified, reportedly because of reluctance on the part of conservative male family members to allow Afghan women to participate in the proceedings.

“She mentioned that she heard other Americans speaking English among themselves, like they were searching other rooms in the compound,” Mansapit added.

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