US General - Deleting Afghan Massacre Footage "Justified"

Recently, an incident in Afghanistan led to US soldiers shooting what were apparently innocent civilian bystanders. The incident was captured by freelance journalists working for AP, who were then forced to delete photos and video at the scene of violence by US troops.

Yesterday:

The U.S. military asserted that an American soldier was justified in erasing journalists' footage of the aftermath of a suicide bombing and shooting in Afghanistan last week, saying publication could have compromised a military investigation and led to false public conclusions.

..."Investigative integrity is one circumstance when civil and military authorities will reluctantly exercise the right to control what a journalist is permitted to document," Col. Victor Petrenko, chief of staff to the top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, said in a letter Friday.

He added that photographs or video taken by "untrained people" might "capture visual details that are not as they originally were."

The Associated Press disputed the assertions.

"That is not a reasonable justification for erasing images from our cameras," said AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll in New York. "AP's journalists in Afghanistan are trained, accredited professionals working at an appropriate distance from the bombing scene. In democratic societies, legitimate journalists are allowed to work without having their equipment seized and their images deleted."

Afghan witnesses and gunshot victims said U.S. forces fired on civilians in cars and on foot along at least a 10-kilometer (six-mile) stretch of road from Barikaw following the suicide attack against the Marine convoy. The U.S. military said insurgents also fired on American forces during the attack. One Marine was wounded.

A U.S. soldier deleted the AP journalists' footage that showed a civilian four-wheel drive vehicle in which three Afghans were shot to death about 100 meters (yards) from the suicide bombing. The journalists had met requests from the military to not move any closer to the bomb site.

Other Afghan journalists said the military also deleted their footage.

Petrenko said that if people who are not part of the investigation entered such a "secured area" they could disturb evidence and other clues, "potentially fouling the conclusions of the investigation."

Petrenko said that taking pictures could also misrepresent what had happened in the incident.

"When untrained people take photographs or video, there is a very real risk that the images or videography will capture visual details that are not as they originally were," he said. "If such visual media are subsequently used as part of the public record to document an event like this, then public conclusions about such a serious event can be falsely made."

At least eight Afghans were killed and 34 wounded in the shootings.

This may well be another Haditha.