Nangar Khel redux

Seven Polish soldiers of varying ranks are on trial for the massacre at Nangar Khel, which occurred almost a year ago. (See my article on the massacre here; enhanced version here.)

The matter has still not been covered in the Canadian press at all. The American press featured a couple of articles when the case first broke last fall, but has not followed up, despite allegations that American officers were also involved. (The Polish forces were operating in Paktika province under American command at the time.)

Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland)
Nangar Khel - a Reconstruction

The soldiers arraigned on war crime charges admit they went to the village with the intention of shelling it. Some refused to, other tried to stop the shelling, still others kept shooting

Below we present a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the events at Nangar Khel...

We showed the reconstruction to three soldiers who witnessed the shelling of the village. 'It is an accurate account of what happened', they said.

It all started early on 16 August 2007. Two vehicles in a Polish-US convoy hit taliban mines near the village of Nangar Khel. The convoy commander, Maciej Nowak, asked the Polish base at Wazi-Kwa to tow away the damaged vehicles. A platform trailer was sent, but it was accompanied by two commando units...

The first unit, led by Lieutenant Łukasz 'Bolec' Bywalec, carried with it an order. It had been issued, according to the soldiers' testimonies, by the base commander, Olgierd 'Olo' Cieśla. According to the indictment, 'Olo' told his men to 'f--- over three villages'.Neither Maciej Nowak nor Lieutenant Artur Pracki, the commander of the second commando unit, today the main witness for the prosecution, knew about the order...

Lieutenant Pracki refused to open fire. He contacted Wazi-Kwa base: 'I'm ignoring these targets'...

Also Nowak, who learned about the shelling of the village from his scouts, contacted the Wazi-Kwa commander: 'Stop this fire'...

Nowak told his sergeant to rush to the place from which the mortars were giving fire.

The sergeant did. He jumped out of the vehicle and cried at Bywalec's men: 'What are you doing? There are women and children there!'.

The case file contains the reply he got from Damian 'Ligo' Ligocki, another of the defendants, operator of a machine gun on the Humvee's turret: 'Why, we're banging them!'...

It was only the intervention of one of the officers, assisting in the evacuation of the mine-hit vehicles, that ended the cannonade...

Who issued the ill-fated order? The testimonies of three indicted commandoes are unequivocal: it was 'Olo', during the afternoon briefing at Wazi-Kwa base. He told them to 'use the occasion' of the vehicles' evacuation to shell three villages.

'Olo' denies that today, but 'Osa' incriminates him: 'I don't know why he denies his own order', he told Gazeta. 'I told my men we were to "f--- over three villages" because that was our assignment'.

But the commandoes explain: we didn't follow the order, we aimed at the nearby hills rather than the village buildings.

The prosecutors are anxious about the soldiers who objected to the shelling. One witness for the prosecution recently found the screws in his car's wheels loosened... (link)