killed around 9 P.M. on Sunday, January 18, 2004

 in a mountain village, Saghatho, in the Charcheno (Char Cheno) district of Uruzgan Province. The little hamlet perched on a small hill was hit by U.S. fire some hours after three U.S. soldiers had been wounded at their fire base in Deh Rawud by some 15 attackers. Abdur Rahman, district chief of Charcheno said, “of course, all those who got killed were civilians. We do not know why the Americans carried out this raid.” The villagers were scared by the presence of U.S. soldiers who were about to carry out a raid on their village. Fearing imprisonment (or worse?) they fled towards the nearby river. They never got there. All 10-11 were slaughtered by the heavy canon and machine-gun fire of an AC-130 gunship. Images released by Al Jazeera confirm such an account.

Two weeks later, the U.S.-supported puppet president, Karzai, noted that a U.S air raid in Charcheno had killed 10 Afghan villagers. The U.S. military, as usual, reported that only 5 armed men had been killed in the air raid after they left a compound where mid-level Taliban leaders had gathered. The Karzai appointed governor of Uruzgan confirmed Rahman’s account. Rahman added that the 11 victims were buried Sunday in their village, where residents were “very afraid and very angry.” The photo above taken by Shah Marai of Agence France Presse on January 19, 2004, shows the village after the U.S. “precision” raid.

During January 18-20^th, some 2-30 US Special Forces and about 100 Afghan soldiers arrested 10 “suspects”: in the Mahmara and Saghatho areas of Char Cheno. We know about Mohibullah, 21, because of the independent reporting of Andy Worthington who in July 2007 wrote about the anonymous victims of Guantanamo:

“The man who was taken to Guantánamo because his house was bombed is Mohibullah, from Uruzgan province, who was just 21 when he was captured. Woken in the night by the sound of firing, he went into his compound and fired three warning shots into the air to ward off what he thought were burglars. Soon after, an American plane dropped a bomb on his compound, injuring him, and he was captured by Special Forces the following morning. “I never worked with the Taliban, or talked with them or ate with them,” he told his tribunal at Guantánamo. “I was a bus driver.” Two years ago, in an attempt to secure his freedom, he wrote a habeas corpus petition, without the help of a lawyer, in which he explained more about the circumstances of his capture, noting that he was severely injured when his house was destroyed, but that when the Americans, who admitted that the bombing might have been a mistake, took him away, claiming that they were going to treat his wounds, he was transported to Guantánamo instead. “Now it has been two and one-half years that I have been detained here and I do not why,” Mohibullah wrote. “Even the interrogators have still not told me what my crime was and why they detained me.”

 Victims of a retaliatory U.S. “precision” attack by an AC-130 gunship and U.S. Special Forces’ ground raid