Army specialist Jeremy Morlock and Private Andrew Holmes are accused of being part of a kill team that murdered innocent civilians in Afghanistan.
Newly published photos and footage have revealed that members of a reported US army unit's "kill team" targeted innocent Afghan civilians for wager.
The videos show US soldiers cut the finger of an Afghan teen they killed 'for kicks' and later used it to wage a bet while playing cards, the weekly magazine Rolling Stone reported.
A week after one soldier was jailed after striking a plea bargain to testify against the alleged team's ringleader, the magazine published a series of graphic images and a long story including extensive details of the allegations.
The images were published just days after another batch of pictures taken by the soldiers appeared in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel.
The Rolling Stone pictures included vivid versions of photos published by Der Spiegel, showing soldiers posing with the bloodied body of the Afghan youth, holding the head up to the camera.
Seventeen photographs taken by the soldiers, including one of a severed head and another showing a pair of blown off legs accompanied an article by Mark Boal, describing how the youth shown in the still pictures, identified later as Gul Mudin, a farm worker, was picked out on January 15 last year as the first victim of the "kill team."
Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, the squad leader and main target of the Army's ongoing war crimes investigation, allegedly sliced the finger off Mudin.
Corporal Jeremy Morlock -- who was jailed for 24 years last week -- and Private Andrew Holmes initially threw a grenade at the teenager before gunning him down.
"When it came time for their wager, Morlock and Holmes said they would bet a finger," Boal reported in the magazine on Monday, adding, "Then they tossed the finger that Gibbs had sliced from Mudin's body on the card pile."
In the following months they and others staged a number of such killings, according to the Rolling Stone account, citing other witnesses questioned after the killings were revealed by a fellow soldier.
Morlock, one of five soldiers charged with murder and tried in a military court south of Seattle, is expected to be the star witness in the court martial of the alleged ringleader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs.
The US military apologized after Rolling Stone published the photos and videos, saying they “are disturbing and in striking contrast to the standards and values of the United States Army."
SB/GHN/HRF
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