Canadian troops gun down Afghan civilian

According to Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) correspondent Patrick Brown, who interviewed the dead man’s family, there are widely diverging interpretations of what actually happened on the evening of March 14. Sharply contradicting the Canadian military’s version of events on a number of key points, family members of the slain man, Nasrat Ali Hassan, say that no warning was given before a Canadian soldier opened fire, fatally shooting the husband and father of six.

Hassan’s son, who was also in the taxi, said he pleaded with soldiers to take his father to the hospital but the interpreter attached to the CAF convoy warned him to stay back or else he too would be shot.

It took the Canadian military 16 hours to confirm that the event had actually taken place and even after such a lengthy delay, military authorities were unable to answer the most basic questions, e.g. why the victim was not given immediate medical attention.

Lieutenant Colonel Derek Basinger, chief of staff for Task Force Afghanistan, has stated that CAF personnel did not intend to use lethal force and that the passenger in the taxi (a three-wheel motorized rickshaw) was in fact killed by what were meant as warning shots. Basinger also claimed that the wounded Hassan was not treated by medics at the scene because they did not believe his wounds were life-threatening.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/cana-m18.shtml