The Maywand District murders were the thrill killings of at least three Afghan civilians perpetrated by a group of U.S. Army soldiers from January to May 2010, during the War in Afghanistan. The soldiers, who referred to themselves as the "Kill Team", were members of the 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, and 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. They were based at FOB Ramrod in Maiwand, in Kandahar Province of Afghanistan. During the summer of 2010, the military charged five members of the platoon with the murders of three Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province and collecting their body parts as trophies. In addition, seven soldiers were charged with crimes such as hashish use, impeding an investigation, and attacking the whistleblower Private first class Justin Stoner. In March 2011, U.S. Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock pleaded guilty to three counts of premeditated murder. He told the court that he had helped to kill unarmed native Afghans in faked combat situations. Under a plea deal, Morlock received 24 years in prison for murdering three Afghan civilians in return for testimony against other soldiers. Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, the highest-ranking soldier and the ringleader, was also convicted on three counts of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison. Private First Class Andrew Holmes pleaded guilty to murder without premeditation and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Specialist Adam C. Winfield, who informed his father after the first murder and whose father attempted to alert the Army, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to three years in prison. In total, eleven of the twelve soldiers charged were convicted of crimes. All charges against the twelfth soldier, Specialist Michael Wagnon, were dropped by the U.S. military "in the interest of justice" without further explanation. PFC Justin Stoner, who initiated the case by reporting the murders to his superiors, was not charged.
Killings
All three of the staged killings of Afghan civilians occurred in the Maywand District of Afghanistan:
On January 15, 2010, in the village of La Mohammad Kalay, fifteen-year-old Gul Mudin was doing farm work for his father. He was unarmed. Under the direction of Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, SPC Jeremy Morlock and PFC Andrew Holmes killed Mudin "by means of throwing a fragmentary grenade at him and shooting him with a machine gun and an assault rifle". The soldiers then stripped the boy and took photos with his body. They cut off the boy's little finger and left his body on the ground half-naked. On February 22, using thermal imagery, the soldiers discovered Marach Agha curled in a ball by a roadside. The soldiers killed him and kept part of his skull as a trophy. Morlock pleaded guilty for his death. The Army later said it believed Marach Agha to be deaf or mentally disabled. In the village of Kari Kheyl, Gibbs "shot at close range an unarmed man", the third victim. On May 2, 2010, Gibbs, Morlock, and SPC Adam Winfield attacked and killed Mullah Adahdad with a grenade and gunfire in front of the man's wife and children. Gibbs amputated and kept the man's finger. Three days after Adahdad was murdered, members of a Stryker platoon returned to his village. Tribal elders had complained to Army officers that the cleric had been unarmed and that the shooting was a setup. "This guy was shot because he took an aggressive action against coalition forces," Lt. Stefan Moye, the platoon leader, explained to village residents in Qualaday. "We didn't just [expletive] come over here and just shoot him randomly. And we don't do that." This conversation was recorded by embedded photojournalist Max Becherer, who at the time primarily freelanced for The New York Times.
Photos and trophies of killings
Der Spiegel published three photos of U.S. soldiers posing with the bodies of Afghans they had killed. One of the photos shows SPC Jeremy Morlock next to one of them. He appears to be smiling and raising the head of a corpse by the hair. Other images published later in Rolling Stone include one of two unidentified Afghans cuffed together around a milestone and wearing a cardboard handwritten sign made out of an MRE package box that read "Talibans are Dead". Other photos were taken of mutilated body parts, among them one of a head being maneuvered with a stick. In Kabul, senior officials at NATO's International Security Assistance Force have compared the pictures published to the images of U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Gibbs used medical shears to sever several fingers that he kept as a form of human trophy collecting. He gave one of them to Holmes, who kept it dried in a Ziploc bag.
Legal proceedings Five of the Army soldiers faced murder charges while seven others were charged with participating in a coverup.
Then-Staff Sergeant David Bram
David Bram from Vacaville, California was charged with conspiracy to commit assault and battery, unlawfully striking another soldier, violating a lawful order, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, and endeavoring to impede an investigation. In May 2011, additional charges were filed against Bram, including solicitation to commit premeditated murder, aggravated assault on Afghan civilians, planting evidence, and unlawfully discussing murder scenarios with subordinates. He was convicted by an enlisted panel sitting as a general court-martial of conspiracy to commit assault and battery, failure to obey a general order, dereliction of duty, maltreatment of a subordinate, assault consummated by battery, obstruction of justice, and solicitation of another to commit murder. Bram was sentenced to 5 years in prison, reduced in rank to Private, and dishonorably discharged. The U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and sentence, and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces denied review. Bram has since been released from prison.
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