Four seconds in Afghanistan: Was it combat, or a crime?

Four seconds in Afghanistan: Was it combat, or a crime?
By KIM MURPHY
Los Angeles Times
Published: June 10, 2012

BAMBERG, Germany — Sgt. 1st Class Walter Taylor’s life collapsed in four interminable seconds in a dusty field in central Afghanistan.

His convoy was reeling from a roadside bomb, his fellow soldiers were engaged in combat with insurgents — and a mysterious black car had just screeched to a stop in the middle of the firefight.

Second 1: A figure dressed in dark, bulky clothing emerges from the back seat.

Second 2: The figure begins walking toward the trunk.

Second 3: Taylor, with five wounded comrades behind him, sees a thin trigger wire seeming to snake directly toward the black car. Could there be a second bomb in the trunk?

Second 4: Taylor squeezes the trigger on his M-4 carbine. The figure crumples to the dirt.

The figure was not an insurgent, but Dr. Aqilah Hikmat, a 49-year-old mother of four who headed the obstetrics department at the nearby Ghazni provincial hospital. Also dead inside the car were Hikmat’s 18-year-old son and her 16-year-old niece. Hikmat’s husband, in the front seat, was wounded.

Army prosecutors say Hikmat’s killing in July 2011 was not just a casualty of combat, but a crime. Charged with negligent homicide and dereliction of duty, Taylor will face a hearing June 19 before a U.S. military judge in Germany to determine whether the case goes to a full court-martial, with the possibility of three years in prison.

Ten days after the explosion and firefight, Taylor got what he is convinced was a dose of Afghan street justice: His vehicle was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, which blew off his nose, shattered his cheeks, ripped open his lips, drove his teeth back toward his throat, blinded him in one eye — in short, left him without a face as he had known it.
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