New British 'friendly fire' death in Afghanistan probed

A second British soldier has died after being wounded in a suspected "friendly fire" incident in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence has said.

The soldier, from 3rd Battalion The Rifles, has not been named but his family has been told.

He died on Tuesday, having been wounded in a fire fight near Sangin, central Helmand Province, on Monday.

A soldier killed in a separate suspected friendly fire incident has been named as L/Cpl Michael Pritchard.

L/Cpl Pritchard, 22, a Kent-born Royal Military Policeman who lived in Eastbourne, Sussex, died as a result of "small arms fire" - also near Sangin - on Sunday.

Both deaths are under investigation and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) says no firm conclusions will be drawn until after the men's inquests.

Some 105 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year, bringing the total killed since operations began in 2001 to 242.

The MoD said "initial reports" suggested the latest death "may have resulted from a friendly fire incident".

Task Force Helmand spokesman, Lt Col David Wakefield, said the soldier's "courage and his sacrifice will not be forgotten".

The BBC's Adam Mynott said that to have two friendly fire deaths on consecutive nights was unusual.

However, he said Sangin was one of the "hottest" areas of conflict between British forces and the Taliban.

"In these shooting incidents where there's a lot of gunfire, it's very hard to tell what's happening," he added.

L/Cpl Pritchard was born in Maidstone, Kent, and joined the Royal Military Police (RMP) in 2007. He had been in Afghanistan since October.

His family said: "With great sadness we say goodbye to our beloved son, a lover of life who has lived life to the full and has brought great joy to all those who are lucky enough to know him.

"A light that shines brightly, our precious son, brother, grandson, boyfriend and special friend to all, we are very proud of you in all that you have done and achieved and you will always be in our hearts now and ever more."

'Unbearable grief'

The soldier's commanding officer, Lt Col Debbie Poneskis, described him as "everything you would want in a military policeman".

"He was a professional and robust soldier and one who was both physically and morally courageous," she said, adding that he was "a cheeky chap, whose laughter was infectious".

"L/Cpl Pritchard's death has hit us as a regiment very hard, at a time when we thought we had already suffered unbearable pain and grief."

Several Royal Military Policemen have been killed in recent months.

They include Acting Cpl Steven Boote and Cpl Nicholas Webster-Smith, who were shot dead by a rogue Afghan policeman in November, and Sgt Robert Loughram-Dickson, who died in a gun battle in the same month.

Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth said he was "deeply saddened" at L/Cpl Pritchard's death.

"He was hard-working and dependable and was showing great promise as a junior non-commissioned officer," he added.

Source:bbc.co.uk

Why didn't safe prison for detainees get built?

Canadian soldiers of the International Security Force watch a group of Afghan civilians being held for questioning near the site of an explosion in Kandahar, Afghanistan, May 12, 2008. A suicide car bomber attacked a convoy of Canadian troops that day in the southern city of Kandahar, killing a passing civilian and wounding two soldiers.

ALLAUDDIN KHAN/AP FILE PHOTO







OTTAWA–Who or what killed a Dutch- and British-backed proposal to build or renovate a safe prison facility for all Afghan detainees taken in southern Afghanistan?

It is one of the mysteries raised by diplomat Richard Colvin's allegations before a committee of MPs.

The Dutch proposal first came to light after a June 2, 2006, email authored by Colvin was reported by the Star last month. The email remains largely censored due to government concerns over "national security."

In a letter this week to the committee, Colvin further revealed the separate detention facility was "a serious proposal that in spring 2006 was actively being pursued and promoted by two of our principal NATO allies" who remained "interested through 2007."

It is not clear why the proposal went nowhere, although Colvin may have been partly responsible because he told Ottawa that the Red Cross rated Sarpoza prison in Kandahar province, where the Canadians were based, as the best of a bad lot in southern Afghanistan.

Colvin's June 2006 email outlined reasons the Dutch wanted to build a separate jail in Kandahar to hold detainees captured by Dutch, Canadian and British soldiers. Prison conditions in Uruzgan – where Dutch forces were deploying – were crowded, dirty and disgusting. The Red Cross gave it a rating of 33 per cent, whereas it gave Sarpoza prison in Kandahar 67 per cent.

The Dutch option was to have been discussed by Dutch, British and Canadian defence ministers at a NATO meeting in Brussels on June 8, 2006, but no public record exists of the talks.

No one in the office of Gordon O'Connor, who was defence minister at the time, responded to requests for an interview.

Dan Dugas, spokesman for the current minister, Peter MacKay, who was foreign affairs minister at the time, could not address the specifics of the proposal. But he said, "Canada's position has been that Afghans are sovereign and we are there to help them build their capacity in all things, not to do things for them."

According to Colvin, the proposed prison would have been a "sovereign Afghan facility, run by the government of Afghanistan, but with ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) mentors, monitors and management support."

"This would have ensured that detainees were held in appropriate conditions, free from abuse," he wrote in Wednesday's letter to rebut claims by Canadian officials that there was no option but to hand detainees to the Afghan intelligence forces' National Directorate of Security-run prison in Kandahar.

Colvin wrote that the U.S. renovated a wing of an Afghan prison in Kabul to international standards, and embedded American soldiers and jail guards to improve detainee handling practices.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S. diplomat who served in Kabul at the time declined to directly address the issues Colvin has raised, but told the Star there were occasional reports of mistreatment in Afghan detainee-handling facilities. The diplomat said the U.S. – which also built its own prisoner handling facility at Bagram – was concerned that any mistreatment of detainees would damage Afghanistan's image in the U.S. and possibly put U.S. military and economic assistance to the country at risk.

The Dutch ended up transferring detainees to prison facilities in Kabul, according to Colvin's letter to the committee, where they could be monitored and "kept free from harm."

"The Canadian embassy proposed this solution, but it was rejected on the basis that detainees would take up too much space on C-130 flights to Kabul," Colvin wrote.

He said the embassy proposed another solution that was rejected: that Canadian-captured detainees be transferred straight to Sarpoza prison, which was under the control of the Afghan ministries of justice and the interior. The idea was to bypass the NDS facility run by the Afghan intelligence service.

A source at the Dutch embassy in Ottawa said only that the Dutch believed there were other ways of dealing with the detainee issue in Afghanistan than the Canadian approach.

A spokesperson for the British high commission in Ottawa could not shed light on why the proposal for a separate facility did not proceed, but said British forces handed over detainees to ISAF detention facilities monitored by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Source:.thestar.com/