TACOMA, Wash: The first of five US soldiers charged with killing unarmed Afghan civilians last year was sentenced Wednesday to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of premeditated murder. The guilty plea and sentencing of Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 23, of Wasilla, Alaska, marked a turning point in the most serious prosecution of alleged US military atrocities during 10 years of war in Afghanistan. Under questioning by the judge, Morlock recounted his role in the deaths of three unarmed Afghan villagers whose slayings by grenade blasts and rifle fire were staged to appear as legitimate combat casualties. “I knew what I was doing was wrong, sir,” he said, adding that, contrary to his lawyers' suggestions, his judgment was not impaired by drugs. He admitted smoking hashish three or four times a week during his deployment in Afghanistan. German magazine Der Spiegel this week published several photos related to the killings, one showing Morlock crouched grinning over a bloodied corpse as he lifted the dead man's head by the hair for the camera. Mobile phones have fallen silent in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province on the orders of the Taliban, telecoms engineers said, a potent reminder of insurgent power in an area chosen as the showcase for a transition to Afghan security. There has been no service for five days on any network in restive Helmand, where Afghan police and army are slated to take control of the capital, Lashkar Gah, from foreign forces in July, as the first step towards a full handover. Across Afghanistan, insurgents have destroyed network towers of companies that refuse to shut them down when ordered, arguing foreign forces use the signals to monitor militants. Night-time blackouts have become a fact of life for Afghans in more insecure areas, but a total stoppage is unprecedented. “The Taliban threaten us to shut down the network and call us a spy station, on the other hand the government harasses our workers when we listen to the insurgents,” said engineer Ahmad Shah, head of mobile phone firm AWCC in the south. “We are in a situation to listen to the Taliban rather than the government because there is no protection.” The Taliban have already destroyed two of AWCC's network towers in Gereshk district, causing losses running into hundreds of thousands of dollars, Shah added. Meanwhile, A NATO helicopter gunship inadvertently killed two civilians while attacking suspected insurgents in the northern province of Khost, NATO announced Thursday. The attack targeted a Haqqani network leader in Tere Zayi district on Wednesday, according to NATO. “At the time of the strike, two civilians were walking near the moving targeted vehicle,” NATO said Thursday. “They were previously unseen by coalition forces prior to the initiation of the airstrike. Unfortunately both were killed as an unintended result of the strike.” NATO said a “precision airstrike” killed the Haqqani leader and two other insurgents while they were driving in a vehicle. The announcement also described how NATO troops nearly missed civilians near the site of the attack. Britain's defense ministry says two soldiers have been killed in a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan. The soldiers had just completed an operation with the Afghan National Army and the Danish Battle Group to disrupt insurgent activity and search compounds in the Nahr-e Saraj District of Helmand Province. The soldiers were returning to their own camp when their vehicle was hit by an explosion Wednesday. Both members of the 1st Battalion Irish Guards were due to return home in six days. The deaths bring to 362 the number of British forces and civilian defense workers killed in Afghanistan since 2001.
