The US military has charged an Army military police sergeant with prisoner abuse and may charge numerous other soldiers in the December 2002 deaths of two prisoners in Afghanistan.
Sgt James Boland, an Army reservist in the 377th Military Police Company, was charged with assault, maltreatment and dereliction of duty in the deaths at Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, according to US Army Forces Command at Fort McPherson, Georgia.
The case marks the latest legal action by the US military against soldiers involved in the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Army criminal investigators could recommend charges ranging from negligent homicide to dereliction of duty and failure to report an offense against perhaps dozens of US soldiers in Boland's Cincinnati-based unit as well as the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a senior Army official said on condition of anonymity.
The Washington Postreported today that 26 soldiers could face charges.
The two men died on December 4th and December 10th, 2002, after blunt force injuries, the Army said.
Seven Army military police soldiers have been charged in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail on the outskirts of Baghdad. Army investigators last week recommended criminal charges against dozens more military intelligence and military police soldiers as well as private contractors.
The current investigation focuses on cases of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan that took place more than three months before the US invasion of Iraq and even longer before the physical abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqis and Abu Ghraib in the fall and winter of 2003.