One of five U.S. soldiers accused of murdering Afghan civilians for sport and posing for photographs with their mutilated bodies has confessed to investigators, according to video of the confession obtained by ABC News and CNN.
Spc. Jeremy Morlock, 22, was arrested in June on charges of murdering three innocent civilians near Kandahar, where his 5th Stryker Brigade was stationed. In a taped interview with Army investigators, Morlock claimed that his superior, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, coldly selected innocent Afghans to kill for sport and then instructed his men to help make it look like they were insurgents.
Two more civilians were killed after Winfield's father sought help from the Army.
Source:The Upshot
Spc. Jeremy Morlock, 22, was arrested in June on charges of murdering three innocent civilians near Kandahar, where his 5th Stryker Brigade was stationed. In a taped interview with Army investigators, Morlock claimed that his superior, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, coldly selected innocent Afghans to kill for sport and then instructed his men to help make it look like they were insurgents.
- "We'd identify the guy, and Gibbs would make a comment like, 'Hey, you guys wanna wax this guy or what?'" Morlock told investigators. "He'd set up the whole scenario."
Morlock is the first of a total of a dozen soldiers to face court-martial in the case: five on suspicion of murdering three Afghans, seven on suspicion of participating in a cover-up. Testimony and evidence unearthed so far indicates that the "kill team" was using hashish. Prosecutors say the men mutilated the bodies of the Afghans they killed, taking fingers and bones as "souvenirs," and posed for photographs with the corpses. Prosecutors have kept those images sealed for fear their release might incite violence in the Muslim world.- Morlock's attorney told the Los Angeles Times that his client participated in the killings under the threat of discipline or worse from Gibbs: "Everybody in the unit was threatened, from the beginning of this to the end, that if they were not on board, if they were a snitch … they'd get what's coming to them."
Two more civilians were killed after Winfield's father sought help from the Army.
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