Lawyer for convicted Fort Bragg soldier argues new evidence in Afghan shootings case
By Paul Woolverton
The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer
Published: December 19, 2014
Ex-lieutenant convicted of killing two Afghans seeking clemency
A former Army lieutenant convicted last year of murdering two Afghans in the war zone is seeking clemency from Brig. Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the 82nd Airborne Division commander.
Analysis
Effects of Lorance murder verdict on combat decisions to be seen
Will the murder conviction of a soldier who ordered his men to shoot unarmed Afghans last year improve the safety and success of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan? Or will it make them more difficult?
Army lieutenant sentenced to 20 years for Afghan killings
A 10-member jury of military officers convicted 1st Lt. Clint Lorance on two counts of murder and other charges related to a pattern of threatening and intimidating actions toward Afghans as commander of an infantry platoon.
Soldiers testify at court-martial that lieutenant ordered fatal shootings
An 82nd Airborne Division lieutenant who could spend life in prison for murder ordered his platoon to shoot any Afghans they saw on motorcycles during a patrol in southern Afghanistan last summer, soldiers in his unit testified Tuesday during his court-martial.
(Tribune News Service) — The lawyer for a former Fort Bragg officer convicted of murdering two Afghanistan nationals says the Army might not have prosecuted the officer if it had done a more thorough criminal investigation.
Former 1st Lt. Clint Lorance is serving 20 years for ordering his soldiers in July 2012 to shoot three men when they were riding a motorcycle near his platoon in a Taliban-controlled area of Afghanistan.
Defense lawyer John N. Maher says records have surfaced since last year's court-martial that indicate that one of the three Afghans had connections to bombings and terror networks. If the government had found and shared that information sooner, perhaps the Army would have decided not to court-martial Lorance, Maher said.
Maher's documents don't assert that the two dead Afghans were directly involved with bombings or terror groups. The documents say the third man, who survived the shooting and fled, was involved in a bombing two months later, and this man knew another man connected to bombings.
Prosecutors at Lorance's court-martial presented evidence that the men on the motorcycle had not done anything hostile to justify an engagement in combat. The military's rules on when to initiate or join combat are designed to prevent civilian casualties and to avoid the making new enemies.
Lorance also was convicted of wrongly ordering his soldiers to shoot toward civilians to scare and harass them, and of wrongly threatening to kill several civilians. Several soldiers said they disagreed with the orders, and one testified that he refused an order to shoot toward children.
The 82nd Airborne Division commander, Maj. Gen. Richard D. Clarke, is the case's convening authority and is reviewing Lorance's conviction and sentencing for clemency. Maher has asked Clarke to overturn the convictions, set Lorance free and allow him to resign from the Army honorably.
Much of the information that defense consultants learned after the trial should have been discovered by investigators and shared with the prosecutors and defense team before the trial began in summer 2013, Maher said.
There may be have been more information - undiscovered, lost or purged - that was important to the case, Maher said. Some may be be in classified databases, he said.
"Had the government developed and produced this information, timely, and quite possibly in more relevant details, the case likely would not have gone to a court-martial," Maher said. "Here's why: What 82nd Airborne captain, lieutenant colonel, colonel or major general is going to send one of his paratroopers to trial when those killed were associated with terror?"
The Army's investigators should have used fingerprints from the Afghan nationals and identification numbers from Afghan government-issued ID cards to consult a database that the military uses to track insurgents, Maher said. These records have shown that:
The man who survived the motorcycle shooting was Haji Karimullah. He was connected in the database this past spring via fingerprints to a bombing about two months after the shooting. The two who died were his brother and nephew.
A man named Abdul Ahad said he was Karimullah's nephew, and was the son and brother of the dead men. Ahad had been held at a top-secret prison in 2009, Maher's paperwork says, but it doesn't say why. The criminal investigators could have discovered this if they had looked, Maher said.
Ahad's fingerprints in March 2013 were matched to a bombing eight months after the Americans killed his father and his brother. This information was not shared with Lorance's lawyers for his court-martial.
There was a second shooting in July 2012, minutes after the one with the motorcycle. Two men were killed and a third was injured. This was about 500 meters away from the motorcycle shooting, Maher said. Lorance was not prosecuted for the second shooting.
Maher said the Americans intercepted radio communications that indicate the men in the second group was scouting Lorance's platoon to commit an attack. The injured survivor, Mohammad Rahim, tested positive for homemade explosive residue on his hands, Maher wrote.
Maher said that Karimullah, the survivor of the motorcycle shooting, knew Rahim. Rahim was later determined by fingerprints to be involved in a bombing several weeks prior to the shootings, and he is connected to other bombings later.
Rahim also knew another man, Sader Mohammad, thought to be heavily involved in bombings, Maher wrote.
This and other evidence creates reasonable doubt and, at a minimum, should have been shared with the lawyers who defended Lorance at his court-martial, Maher said.
Clarke, the division commander, is carefully reviewing the case, said Col. Cathy Wilkinson, an 82nd Airborne spokeswoman.
"He takes this case very seriously and is performing an in-depth study of the file and clemency requests," Wilkinson said. "The case file includes more than 1,500 pages and covers a two-and-a-half year time frame. It would not do this case justice to put a quick suspense (deadline) on the clemency request and rush to a hasty decision."
