A US military appeals court has ordered Army prosecutors to halt their proceedings against one of five US soldiers accused of murdering unarmed civilians in Afghanistan. Lawyers for Private First Class Andrew Holmes had petitioned the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals asking that sealed photographic evidence they believe will exonerate their client be opened to public scrutiny in the case.
They also asked the court to stay the so-called Article 32 investigative proceedings against Holmes, 20, from Boise Idaho, until a decision on the photos is reached. The appeals court granted the stay on Friday and gave the government 20 days to answer the pleadings from Holmes' legal team. Defence lawyers would then have 14 days after that to reply.
Holmes is the youngest of five soldiers charged with premeditated murder as part of an investigation of what military prosecutors describe as a rogue infantry platoon run amok earlier this year in the Afghan province of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold.
Seven others in their unit, part of what was then the 5th Striker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, face lesser charges in the case, which began as a probe of hashish use by the soldiers. The inquiry has grown into the most serious prosecution of alleged atrocities by US troops in nearly nine years of conflict in Afghanistan and a case Pentagon officials have acknowledged could undermine the American war effort there.
The most potentially explosive elements of the case are dozens of ghoulish photos Holmes and others are accused of having taken of Afghan war dead, some said to be showing US troops posing with the bodies. The inflammatory nature of the images has drawn comparisons to pictures of Iraqi prisoners taken by US military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison that sparked world-wide outrage in 2004 against US conduct in Iraq.