Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 3/31/22 Kyle Rempfer on the 2018 Death of Wahedullah Khan, an Afghan Detainee

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

Scott interviews journalist Kyle Rempfer about a piece he recently published in the Army Times. The article tells the story of Wahedullah Khan, an Afghan commando who was taken into custody in 2018 after firing on Czech coalition troops. Khan was first interrogated by Green Berets, then the Czechs, and finally Afghan National Army troops. During these interrogations, Khan was beaten to death. Rempfer explains that it’s been too difficult to pin the responsibility on anyone specifically enough to bring charges. But the involvement of Green Berets was enough to lead to disciplinary action.  Discussed on the show: “Eight Green Berets quietly disciplined after Afghan prisoner’s beating death” (Army Times) Kyle Rempfer is an editor and reporter at Military Times who has covered combat operations, criminal cases, foreign military assistance and training accidents. Before entering journalism, Kyle served in U.S. Air Force Special Tactics and deployed in 2014 to Paktika Province, Afghanistan, and Baghdad, Iraq. Follow him on Twitter @Kyle_Rempfer This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show all right you guys introducing kyle remfer from armytimes dot com welcome the show how are you doing i'm doing well thank you i appreciate you joining us today now uh the piece is called

eight green berets, quietly disciplined after Afghan prisoners beating death. So, a very important story about a guy who was essentially murdered here on October the 22nd, 2018. Is that correct? That's correct, yeah. And the guy, it says here, an Afghan commando, so this is not top. This is a green-on-blue attack, as they call it, right? Someone who worked for the friendly Afghan forces. Yeah, that's right.

You know, any of your listeners were veterans, and probably a fair number who aren't veterans are familiar with this, it is kind of a hallmark of the Afghan war, these insider attacks where allied forces would basically turn their guns on U.S. or NATO troops. And now, so what happened was he, Who did he kill? So basically he turned his gun on some Czech special operators who were driving on to this base called Shindan Air Base in western Afghanistan one afternoon. And he shot the rear vehicle up and he killed one Czech soldier and then wounded two others.

And then not long after that, the Afghans basically called over to the American base and said that they had the guy in custody. the guy who had done the shooting, and they were ready to bring them over for questioning by the Americans and by the checks as well. So now, I'm sorry, I lost the part here where just to skip to the end here, you say that they were quietly disciplined. It also says here the case was closed in May 2021, and leadership decided against prosecution. So we don't have a court case. What evidence do we have?

Where does your story come from here? Clearly, you've interviewed people involved in great detail. So give us the background of even, in fact, if you want, how you found out about this and decided to pursue this story. Yeah, so I found out about it back in 2018. The New York Times had ran a series of stories basically saying that a Green Beret team was removed from Afghanistan. They didn't know why. They didn't know if they were involved in this beating death, but they knew that an Afghan commando was beat to death. And so I kind of marked it on my

calendar. I wanted the FOIA for the Army criminal investigation into this incident and see if anything came of it. And they had putting it off for basically, you know, year after year after year. And then finally in spring of 2021, I got told that it was complete and I can file my FOIA request. So I did that and I got back the entire case file for this criminal investigation. And what the Army criminal probe does is they basically just collect all the evidence and then they deliver that evidence to the soldiers commanders. So they don't charge the soldiers and they don't recommend charges. They just gather up the evidence and say what they have.

And so the commander in this case decided to hand these guys letters of reprimand that were permanently filed meaning that it's kind of a career killer. So, you know, one of these guys, I know the captain involved in this case is already, he voluntarily left the military, but his chances of advancement would probably be pretty limited to nil because of this reprimanded in his file. And one of the reasons why they didn't go forward with actually charging them and putting them in a court case is because, well, there is a lot of evidence. Clearly, you know, there's one witness that was inside the room with the Americans.

He was the translator for the Americans. He told Army criminal investigators all about how they basically brutally beat this guy in this room. And there was also blood evidence from that room. There was blood found on the ceiling. There was some blood found on the walls. Although it did look like the room was cleaned, according to the Army criminal investigators, you know, there was some blood evidence left. The problem with the case, though, is that while it's true that the Americans questioned him,

not long after the Americans questioned him, the Czech forces also questioned him. And the interpreter who basically turned witness in this case, he said that he also heard screaming from inside the room when the checks were questioning him. And on top of that, after they were done questioning this Afghan commando, they turned the Afghan back over to his own unit, and the Americans say that that's when the guy was actually beat. So the problem for a prosecutor in this case is basically there's 10 hours where this crime happened. There are three different nations, militaries, that have their hands and have custody over this guy at three different periods. And so there's a lot of dead space on kind of the whiteboard for a defense attorney to basically say, you know,

the death blows or the beating could have happened in any one of these guys' custodies. and the blood could be attributed just to the check forces when they questioned him. So the real problem is that, you know, it leaves doubt in any juror's mind, you know, beyond the reasonable doubt that the Green Berets were the ones that were, you know, unequivocally responsible for the death. So that's kind of the problem, I think, that the prosecutors faced, and I've been told, you know, as much by different officials. Yeah, these are the economics of a lynching, right? Everybody's just a little bit responsible and nobody can prove exactly, you know, any one person being more responsible than the others. And so, like stoning someone to death. Which blow was the one that really did the job?

Hard to say. Right. So, very good. That's, you know, the Green Beres. Now, is this the same famous Army Green Beret A team that was, you know, I wrote about in my book that's, I'm trying to remember now all the source material. Back then, these guys who had been caught killing quite a few people and bodies dug up on the side of their base and, you know, just outside the fence and all that.

You know, like the same unit, you mean? Yeah, I'm asking, because you're saying that you had read about this, this Green Beret team that had been accused of these crimes. I was wondering if this was just one of that same scandal or this may be a whole different group of guys. A whole different group of guys. Yeah. I think that over the, you know, years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the treatment of detainees particularly has not been particularly a clean record. That's certainly true. Okay. Now, and then, but it's important, too, as you stipulated here, that you're not just going off of some hearsay. You got all this from the Army documents of their criminal investigation here. And now, so all these quotes of the translator all come from the,

investigation or you also tried to interview the guy or you know i tried to reach out to the guy um i do know the company that he worked for um however they were not able to give me his files um and uh no so all the quotes in that story from the translator come from his witness statement that he signed off and he gave to uh the army criminal investigation i see all right and then but so this guy is he still in Afghanistan or he lives here now the witness that's that's a question i think you really don't have an answer for um you know they they wouldn't release to me the name of him and the same thing with the green berets in this case uh all the names were redacted from the the case file and um i know the ranks but you know the the army wouldn't release the private information of them of course

well um according to the former chief of staff to secretary state colon pal at that time now retired obviously uh u.s army colonel lawrence wilkerson 108 this was from an internal investigation a hundred and eight people died in military custody of violent causes not natural ones but whether they were outright torture to death or something approaching that there were you know we know for a fact there were at least six killed by the CIA during that time at a minimum But there's at least

108 and the Associated Press later did Their own story where they confirmed that same number So I don't know if this was one of them or not This may be the margin of error here This poor guy Yeah, I mean, you know I think there's probably a question of like what he would even have been considered at this point You know he had only been in custody for about ten hours

So would he even you know be tracked as a detailed or a prisoner. It's tough to say, and I think that, you know, any sort of proper accounting of, you know, the number of detainees or prisoners of war have been abused. And again, not, you know, they haven't been convicted in a court of law or proven to be total guilty of whatever they've been accused of. You know, I think it's up in the air how well these numbers can even be tracked when you have cases like this that, you know, it happened that it towards the end of the war, right? 2018 as the war in Afghanistan on the U.S. side is really starting to peter off. The U.S. is entering negotiations with the Taliban. And so at this point, you know, it becomes a lot more, there's a lot

more, a lot fewer U.S. troops in country. There's a little bit more of a trick or hold on them. And so some things that maybe could have gotten away with earlier in the war started become a little bit harder to, you know, I don't necessarily want to cover up, but lose sight of, I guess, towards the end. Hang on just one second. Hey, y'all, the audiobook of my book, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism, is finally done. Yes, of course, read by me. It's available at Audible, Amazon, Apple Books, and soon on Google Play and whatever other options

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Hey guys, Scott Horton here for Listen and Think Libertarian audiobooks. As you may know, the audiobook of my new book, enough already. Time to end the war on terrorism is finally out. It's co-produced by our longtime friends at Listen and Think Libertarian Audio Books. For many years now, Derek Sheriff over there at Listen and Think, Listen and Think, has offered lifetime subscriptions to anyone who donates $100 or more to the Scott Horton show at Scott Horton.org slash donate or to the Libertarian Institute at Libertarian Institute.org slash donate.

And they've got a bunch of great titles, including Inside Syria by the late great Rees Erlich. That's listen and think.com. All right, so can you take us through the story of what happened to the guy now? Apparently part of the reason he was killed is because he wouldn't confess to working for the Taliban because he didn't work for the Taliban, right? just saw his shot and he took it. This is part of their, you know, the consequences of their narrative building here were, oh yeah, no, we're just here to help these people and, and we pay these people to be in the Afghan army to protect their country. But in fact, they're traitors to their country

serving a foreign occupying army. And so no wonder they're dangerous when they're standing they're frustrated that this is the only job they could get, but their hearts not in it at all. so this is he's not the only one to do one of these attacks who was never recruited by the Taliban to do so but just did so when they you know took the opportunity to go for it like this guy apparently did but then they wanted answers out of him and he didn't have any answers right and so uh then tell us the story of actually what did happen to him as best you can tell from the investigation here if you could yeah i will and you know it's it's tough there's it's tough to get into the minds you know it's a whole other culture, why all these insider attacks have happened. It's kind of a strange phenomenon.

You know, some of them are attributable to people who, you know, turn sides and join the Taliban or were always members of the Taliban. Some of it has to do with, you know, pursuits or fights that they had with U.S. forces. You know, that said, this case is also kind of different because it happened from an Afghan commando. And the commando Kandaks, where these guys came from, were tended to be much better vetted, better trained, far more loyal, and they worked very well with U.S. forces, and they had good relationships. So it is kind of different in that respect that happened from an Afghan commando and not, you know, a generic, you know, line, regular force Afghan soldier. Right.

But that's, you know, some of the points you pointed to, like there's a lot of cultural issues in Afghanistan, and there's a lot of dynamics that just from us being totally foreign from this country probably have missed for years and years. But beyond that, the story basically goes that after the Afghans brought him over to the U.S. camp, they turned him over to the Americans. The guy arrived in, not in uniform, he was in a track suit and sandals. And so that's a little strange, but he arrived and they turned him over to the Americans. And the Americans, according to the translator, a lot of this is going to be according to the

translator, just giving you a one. morning. According to the translator, the Americans took the guy to a little bit more of a remote part of the camp in order to kind of avoid the loki-loos and just the people standing around who didn't have anything to do. And so they started going through his personal belongings, like his cell phone, looking for shreds of information. And while they did that, and the Green Berets were doing this, the checks took him into the interrogation room. And the translator was outside with the green berets. And at this point, he said he heard screaming from inside the interrogation room and stuff being thrown around. So it sounded like the checks were basically having their way

with this guy. And as the Americans went through his belongings, they didn't really report finding anything, at least in the investigation. And so they ended up going to the room next. And the translator says that the green berets at this point began asking him questions, but they were also beating him. They, you know, slammed his head against the table in the room, slammed his head against the breaker box. You know, at one point, one of the green berets allegedly brandished a knife, said that he wants to slip the guy's throat if he doesn't answer his questions. Another green beret at that point told him to put the knife away. And, you know, this kind of went on for, according to the translator, roughly 30 minutes. And they didn't really get any

information out of the guy. The guy confessed to doing the shooting, per the greener. Green Beret's witness statements. He said that he wasn't a member of the Taliban and he had just made a mistake and he had gone crazy. It's kind of one of those strange, you know, excuses that probably doesn't really make a lot of sense, especially, you know, in that scenario. But, you know, the guy was getting beat, so who knows exactly what his true motivation was, or if he was even being transparent himself. But, you know, regardless, the interrogation ended. The Green Berets decided they weren't really going to get any information out of him. And according to the translator after this. The last time he saw the prisoner in the yard outside of that interrogation

room, the guy's face was swollen around his forehead, swollen around his eyes, and he was bleeding very heavily. And when they turned him back over to the Afghans after this had ended, the Afghans had allegedly put him in the bed of the truck rather than the cab of their truck because he was bleeding so heavily. And so that's basically where the actual allegations, of the war crime against the U.S. forces end, and the Afghan was brought back to his camp. And later on that night, you know, not more than a few hours later, the American camp gets a call and basically are told that the guy's dying and they need to bring him back over to the American facility in order to get medical care. And so they do that. They bring him back over to the surgical team

that's on the American camp. And the surgical team, that's on the American camp. And the surgical team says that when the guy arrived, he had like a nasal airway opener in his nasal passage, basically help him breathe. He had, you know, headdressing on IV in his arms. So it seemed like the Afghans had basically tried to do life-saving measures on him. And it wasn't successful. The surgical team said that when the guy arrived, he had no pulse. So he was, and they were unable to resuscitate him at that point. So they declared time of death at that point. And the surgical team, you know, didn't witness any of the alleged beatings. They just basically said that after, you know, the guy died on their table, they asked the Afghans a little bit of

questions. And the Afghans, not speaking very good English, just said, you know, they beat them. And when the surgeon tried to ask a little more information, the guy just repeated, they beat them. And so, you know, from the Green Berets perspective or from their witness statements, They say that at this point, when they were in the surgical room with the surgical team as they were taking care of this prisoner, they said that the Afghans had made comments about how everyone at the unit had had to go, quote unquote, had a go at the prisoner. And so that's kind of implying that the Afghans were the ones that dealt out this beating. The translator who was also present in the clinic said that that conversation never had.

happened and that was, you know, not true. But, you know, it's just, it becomes, again, kind of part of the difficulty of this case, kind of just a he said, she said thing. And the surgical team was too far away. They didn't hear the exchange. So that's really the end of the, you know, the story of the Afghan prisoner, unfortunately. And at that point, you know, what's, what was previously reported back in 2018 was the, the U.S. headquarters in Kabul, Afghanistan, and the capital, got wind that the, this prisoner had died after this insider attack, that possibly Czech forces were involved, that possibly American forces were involved, and they withdrew the Green Beret team from the country, and then the investigation started for the next three, three and a half years.

And now, what was the Green Beret side of the story, or did they just shut up or what? They said that basically they did an interrogation with this guy, and they acknowledged that they took him in for questioning. They said it was very fruitless. You know, the guy just said he went crazy. He had no real reasoning for why he did it. He didn't say he was a member of the Taliban or anything. And they ended the interrogation with, you know, very little information being gleaned from it.

And the Green Berets said that at that point, they turned him back over to the checks, let the checks talk to him a little bit more. And then they let him go over to, or they released him back into the custody of the Afghan forces. And the Green Berets said that the guy wasn't harmed while in either group's custody, and they never witnessed anyone harm him. And the Green Berets just stuck to the story that from their understanding, it was the Afghans that beat the guy to death. Yeah, plausible enough. Lord knows how many people, if 108 died in Iraq and Afghanistan under American military custody, Lord knows how many died under the control of our allies in the Iraqi army. army and militias and in in Afghanistan as well. I mean, especially in the early years of the

Bogram prison and all of that, no one will ever be held accountable for all of what went on there. And for these same reasons, right? Oh, well, all we did was beat him up for the first 15 minutes, but those guys beat him up for the second 15 minutes. And so get away with it. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I think it's kind of telling that, First Special Forces Command, which is the unit overseeing these Green Berets, did decide to issue reprimands in this case. I mean, they could have just dismissed it altogether. That's true. I mean, in fact, that just establishes that they found this investigation, the same one you found pretty credible here, pretty credible themselves. Yeah, I think that's true. I think that they definitely

found something happened in this room. We can't really prove it in a court of law, but we weren't happy with the way our Green Berets behaved in this scenario. And then one of the things that's also worth pointing out, and I spoke to a former Army JAG, an attorney for the Army. He is a retired colonel, but he had basically pointed out that it often becomes really difficult in all sorts of criminal cases that happen overseas to prosecute these cases, and even just to gather evidence and witness statements after you remove the people from the country. He's argued in the past, he said, that it's important to move the court martial system to the

country where U.S. operations are taking place because, you know, once you leave the country, you start having to deal with getting the witnesses, visas, in order to, you know, bring them over for testimony. You have trouble with, you know, investigators going out and gathering evidence, prosecutors doing their own digging. And I think some of those problems were run into in this case, you know, especially when you have three different foreign groups, you have Czechs, Afghans and Americans. And the military justice system just has jurisdiction over the U.S. troops, right? So they can't really compel foreign forces in the same way that they could, you know, have the sit downs or gather the statements and, you know, lean on the U.S. troops in the way that

they tend to. So I think just the complicating factors of this, you know, when it is a broad coalition of different forces, it introduces some trouble. to the investigative process that, you know, certainly wouldn't be present if this was something that happened just on U.S. soil and, you know, involved, like a bar fight that they're trying to, you know, investigate the truth about. Yeah. Well, I don't know about you, but on behalf of all of America, we're trying very hard to forget that the Afghan war ever happened or that there's anything about it that we need to know or anybody who needs to be held accountable for anything that happened there. We're on to the next one. So keep up, Mr. Army Times,

guy. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah. And I would just say, it is really important, I think, after these conflicts then, to not let them fall by the wayside and just ignore the situations. And I would also like to add just, you know, I served in Afghanistan as like an enabler for a Green Beret team. I was in the Air Force and I, you know, went on patrols with them. And they were a very by the book professional group and they handled detainees and they did it very professionally. So I think it's important, you know, just to just to note that there are incidents like this that happen, but I think it's also unfair to, you know, just cast a wide net and assume that this is the way all teams would behave because I don't think that is the

case. And I think that my own personal experience interacting with a lot of green berets has been that by and large, they are professionals and they are very good at what they do. And, you know, I think they handle situations far better than this team handled it in this case. Yeah, well, it all comes down to accountability right uh you're talking about an armed lethal force so they have to be under very tight control at all times or else very bad things happen right yeah absolutely all right well so um i really appreciate your time and i appreciate your work on this story a very important one so thank you i appreciate you having me on thank you very much all right you guys that is kyle remfer he wrote this piece for armytimes dot com eight green berets quietly

disciplined after Afghan prisoners beating death. The Scott Horton show, Anti-War Radio, can be heard on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, ScottHorton.org, and Libertarian Institute.org.