John Henry Browne the lawyer representing Robert Bales claims that U.S. forces in Afghanistan are blocking his teams fact-finding mission. He also claims that prosecutors are not cooperating with him either. Bales is the U.S. soldier accused of single-handedly murdering 17 Afghan civilians in two villages near the base where he was stationed.
Browne's team was unable to interview witnesses to the massacre. U.S. forces obstructed the team from visiting a hospital that contained injured civilians.
U.S. investigators are not sharing their own information obtained from interviews. The injured were released with no contact information available to the team. This sounds very much to be a case of obstruction of justice.
The team has only been able to interview some U.S.soldiers about the attack. Browne speculates that the lack of cooperation may reflect the weakness of the prosecution case against Bales.
Browne noted that there is an “almost complete information blackout from the government, which is having a devastating effect on our ability to investigate the charges preferred against our client.” Perhaps the government and military also wants to hide facts about the attack. Many believe that there was more than one soldier involved.
An Afghan probe claims that up to 20 U.S. soldiers were involved. At first Karzai supported the report and then completely flip-flopped and accepted the official U.S. story of one lone attacker. For more see this article.. A reporter who interviewed survivors also found witnesses who stated that more than one soldier was involved. See the attached video.
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