I acted alone, says man claiming to be rogue Afghan who murdered three British soldiers

Published on Thursday 15 July 2010 19:10

A MAN claiming to be the renegade Afghan soldier who killed three British troops in Afghanistan has spoken about his motivation for the attack.

Talib Hussein, 21, said he was angry at the conduct of British soldiers in Helmand Province, accusing them of killing civilians, including children.

Major James Joshua Bowman, Lieutenant Neal Turkington and Corporal Arjun Purja Pun from 1st Battalion the Royal Gurkha Rifles were killed in the attack on Tuesday at a base shared by British troops and the Afghan National Army at Nahr-e-Saraj.

Maj Bowman was shot dead in his sleeping quarters, while Lt Turkington and Cpl Pun were killed when Hussein fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the command centre. Four other soldiers were seriously injured.

In a BBC interview arranged after the Taleban contacted the broadcaster in Kabul, the man claiming to be Hussein said he had acted alone and that he had joined the Taleban following the attack.

When challenged during the ten-minute interview via mobile telephone that civilians had also been killed during Taleban attacks, Hussein responded by saying the Taleban were mujahideen fighting for their own country. He also claimed British soldiers were not there to secure and reconstruct Afghanistan.

He said the shooting of British soldiers had been his idea, and that he had had no contact with the Taleban, Iran or Pakistan beforehand. He maintained he had joined the Taleban only after the shooting.

The man said he belonged to the Hazara ethnic group and had spent a few years in Iran. He said that soon after returning to Afghanistan a year ago, he had joined the Afghan army.

The Ministry of Defence said: "We are aware that an individual has contacted the media claiming responsibility for the killing of three British soldiers on Tuesday morning in Helmand Province.

"While we cannot comment on the legitimacy of this individual's claims to be the suspect responsible for this cowardly attack, it is ridiculous to suggest that we are engaged in suicide attacks or are deliberately killing civilians.

"Insurgents and those who are against the coalition mission in Afghanistan routinely make false and exaggerated claims and so care must be taken not to accept their accounts at face value."

The Taleban had already said they were sheltering the renegade soldier.

A massive manhunt involving the SAS is under way to try to find the killer, identified by his commander as Sergeant Talib Hussein, from Afghanistan's Shia Muslim community – an unnatural ally of the hardline Sunni Muslim Taleban.

The first his family knew of the attack was when they were contacted by this newspaper. "I don't believe it," said his brother, Mohammed Abbas, via telephone, from an undisclosed location in Kabul. "Why would my brother do that?"

Mr Abbas refused to talk for long as he feared being arrested by the Afghan authorities, who sometimes seize relatives as collateral to persuade fugitives to turn themselves in.

Officials said the attack appeared to have been premeditated and they suspect Hussein may have had outside help planning it.

The Taleban claimed responsibility only many hours later, via a website, and Hussein would have had little choice but to seek sanctuary with them once he left the base, a few miles outside the provincial capital Lashkar Gah.

Mohammed Raouf, a former classmate who is now a policeman, said Hussein had dropped out of school in 11th grade, his penultimate year, after rowing with his family. Although he never finished his secondary education, Hussein would still have been considerably better educated than most of the soldiers in his intake and that would explain why he had been promoted to sergeant.

Mr Raouf said few people had known he was in the army, but he regularly sent money home. It was spared the worst of the violence during Afghanistan's civil war and was one of the very few places where girls' schools stayed open while the Taleban were in power.

Six Afghan soldiers were killed east of Hussein's home town, when US helicopters mistook an Afghan army night patrol for insurgent activity and hit their position with rockets a week before Hussein's attack.

The army commander in Ghazni province, General Mohammed Rajab, dismissed this theory on the basis that all the soldiers killed in the airstrike were from outside. "That's not the reason he attacked the British," he said. "The soldiers who were killed by the American airstrike were from Bamiyan, Samangan, Badakhshan and Jalalabad. None of them were from Jaghori or from Ghazni."

A former classmate who is now a policeman, Mohammed Raouf, said Hussein had dropped out of school in 11th grade, his penultimate year, after rowing with his family. "He ran away from home," he said. "He had problems with his brothers. I think it was about money."

Although he never finished his secondary education, Hussein would still have been considerably more educated than most of the soldiers in his intake and it would explain why he was promoted to sergeant.

A neighbour, Mohammad Payadar, said people in the village thought Hussein had joined a regular exodus of economic migrants who go to Iran looking for work. He said Hussein had never been home since.

His classmate Raouf said very few people had known he was in the army, but he regularly sent money home. Nonetheless, it seems he didn't go home when he got leave from Helmand six weeks ago. Where he went remains a mystery.

His commander General Paktiawal believes this was the time when he was turned by the insurgents.