THE AMERICAN BOMBING OF AN AFGHAN HOSPITAL –

MISTAKE OR WAR CRIME?

CLE Credit: 1.0 Wednesday, May 11, 2016

10:40 a.m. - 11:40 a.m. Cascade Ballroom B

Kentucky International Convention Center Louisville, Kentucky

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TABLE OF CONTENTS The Presenter .................................................................................................................. i Professor Gregory Gordon Interviewed Live on CNN ...................................................... 1 Civilians "Accidentally Struck" in Afghan Hospital Bombing, U.S. Commander Says ....... 3 Afghanistan: MSF Demands Explanations after Deadly Airstrikes Hit Hospital in Kunduz .......................................................................................................... 7 U.S. General: Human Error Led to Doctors Without Borders Strike ................................ 9 U.S. Bombing of Doctors Without Borders Hospital Result of "Human Error" ................ 13 More than a Dozen U.S. Military Members Disciplined for Role in Bombing Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan ........................................... 17 U.S. Military Personnel Punished for Kunduz Hospital Attack ........................................ 19 No Criminal Charges to Be Filed in U.S. Bombing of MSF Hospital ............................... 21

THE PRESENTER

Professor Gregory S. Gordon The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Faculty of Law 6/F Lee Shau Kee Building

Sha Tin, NT, Hong Kong SAR gregoryg@cuhk.edu.hk

PROFESSOR GREGORY S. GORDON is Associate Professor and Assistant Dean for the Research Postgraduates Program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Faculty of Law. Prior to joining CUHK, Professor Gordon was a tenured faculty member at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Law and Director of the UND Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree (summa cum laude) and Juris Doctor at the University of California at Berkeley. He then served as law clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Martin Pence. After a stint as a litigator in San Francisco, he worked with the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where he served as Legal Officer and Deputy Team Leader for the landmark "media" cases, the first international post-Nuremberg prosecutions of radio and print media executives for incitement to genocide. For this work, Professor Gordon received a commendation from Attorney General Janet Reno for "Service to the United States and International Justice." After his experience at the ICTR, he became a white-collar criminal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division. Following a detail as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, he was appointed as the Tax Division's Liaison to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (Pacific Region) for which he helped prosecute large narcotics trafficking rings. Also during this time, he was detailed to Sierra Leone to conduct a post-civil war justice assessment for the Department of Justice's Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance, and Training. In 2003, he joined the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Office of Special Investigations, where he helped investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals and modern human rights violators. Professor Gordon has been featured on C-SPAN, NPR, the BBC and Radio France Internationale as an expert on war crimes prosecution and has lectured on that subject at the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the United States Army Judge Advocate General School, the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum and Library, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has trained high-level federal prosecutors in Addis Ababa at the request of the Ethiopian government, as well as prepared prosecutors for the Khmer Rouge leadership trial at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, and trained lawyers and judges at the War Crimes Chamber for the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. His scholarship on international criminal law has been published in leading international academic publications, such as the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law and the Virginia Journal of International Law as well as top American flagship law reviews such as the

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Ohio State Law Journal and the Oregon Law Review. He is one of the world's foremost authorities on incitement to genocide and his book Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation to Fruition, proposing a new paradigm for international hate speech law, will be published by Oxford University Press in 2017. Professor Gordon has presented his work at institutions such as Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, Yale University, Georgetown University Law Center, Melbourne Law School, and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He was the inaugural winner of the North Dakota Spirit Law School Faculty Achievement Award in 2009 and was invited to deliver the prestigious UND Faculty Lecture in 2011. In 2010, Professor Gordon co-wrote the U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief of Holocaust and Darfur Genocide survivors in the case of Yousuf v. Samantar. He also represented the International League for Human Rights at the International Criminal Court Conference in Kampala, Uganda. In 2012, he was the BBC World News live on-air television analyst for the announcement of the historic Charles Taylor trial verdict. He is an adviser on hate speech issues for the Sentinel Project on Genocide Prevention's Advisory Council and serves on the Council of Advisors for the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression.

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PROFESSOR GREGORY GORDON INTERVIEWED LIVE ON CNN REGARDING POSSIBLE WAR CRIMES COMMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES Reprinted from The Faculty of Law of the Chinese University of Hong Kong

http://www.law.cuhk.edu.hk/en/news/detail.php?paramDate=2015-10-06&guid=60EA10EB-0AA5-AD2C-DCE4-E735E6F8458C-1444097365

On 5 October 2015, Professor Gregory Gordon, a former international criminal prosecutor, was interviewed live on CNN regarding allegations that the United States may have committed war crimes in connection with the recent bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan. The link to the interview can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2015/10/05/afghanistan-msf-airstrike-gordon-intv.cnn.html Professor Gordon was interviewed via satellite in CNN’s Hong Kong studio by the network’s anchor from CNN headquarters in Atlanta. Professor Gordon’s analysis, which was broadcast around the world on CNN International, touched on whether the alleged U.S. airstrike might have violated certain cardinal law of war principles, including distinction and proportionality, as well as certain precautionary obligations, such as warnings to civilians. He commented that the sketchy facts known suggest that international humanitarian law violations may have occurred but that the legal analysis can be complex and requires the kind of in-depth investigation not currently possible given the hospital’s location in an active combat zone. He also considered whether the United States could be realistically expected to carry out a legitimate investigation regarding the allegations. He pointed out that the United States has, on past occasions, investigated its own military personnel with respect to war crimes allegations and has tried and convicted some of them. That said, he emphasized that the United States is not subject to the International Criminal Court. So, to the extent there are claims of an ineffective or incomplete justice effort, there is no meaningful opportunity for external accountability. Professor Gordon’s insights were also featured in an article CNN published on the internet that can be found here: http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/05/asia/afghanistan-doctors-without-borders-hospital/

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CIVILIANS 'ACCIDENTALLY STRUCK' IN AFGHAN HOSPITAL BOMBING, U.S. COMMANDER SAYS

By Jethro Mullen and Ashley Fantz, CNN∗ Updated 1610 GMT (2310 HKT) October 6, 2015

Reprinted from http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/05/asia/afghanistan-doctors-without-borders-hospital/, last visited April 1, 2016. A Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan was struck accidentally after Afghan forces called for air support from the American military, Gen. John Campbell, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said Monday. Saturday's bombardment in Kunduz has sparked international outrage. It killed twelve medical staff members and at least ten patients, three of them children, Doctors Without Borders said. Another thirty-seven people were wounded, according to the global charity group, which works in conflict zones to help victims of war and other tragedies. Every person who died at the hospital was Afghan, the group said. Addressing reporters Monday at the Pentagon, Campbell said initial reports indicated the airstrike was called to protect U.S. forces. "We have now learned that on October 3, Afghan forces advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support from U.S. forces," he said. "An airstrike was then called to eliminate the Taliban threat, and several innocent civilians were accidentally struck." Campbell offered his "deepest condolences." Doctors Without Borders, which also goes by the name Médecins Sans Frontières, has called the bombing a war crime. In a terse statement after the general spoke, the organization demanded a full and transparent independent investigation. "Today the U.S. government has admitted that it was their airstrike that hit our hospital in Kunduz and killed twenty-two patients and MSF staff," the statement read. "Their description of the attack keeps changing – from collateral damage, to a tragic incident, to now attempting to pass responsibility to the Afghanistan government." "The reality is the U.S. dropped those bombs. The U.S. hit a huge hospital full of wounded patients and MSF staff. The U.S. military remains responsible for the targets it hits, even though it is part of a coalition," it continued. "There can be no justification for this horrible attack. With such constant discrepancies in the U.S. and Afghan accounts of what happened, the need for a full transparent independent investigation is ever more critical."

∗ CNN's Masoud Popalzai, Ben Brumfield, Greg Botelho, Nic Robertson, Steve Almasy, Barbara Starr, Pierre Meilhan and Jason Hanna contributed to this report.

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White House spokesman Josh Earnest defended the U.S. military on Monday, saying that protecting civilians is a priority. "There is no country in the world and no military in the world that goes to greater lengths and places a higher premium on avoiding civilian casualties than the United States Department of Defense," Earnest said. Investigations U.S. President Barack Obama has said the Pentagon is carrying out "a full investigation" and he expects "a full accounting of the facts and circumstances." Campbell said, "If errors were committed, we will acknowledge them. We will hold those responsible accountable, and we will take steps to ensure mistakes are not repeated." "We will await the outcome of the investigation to provide any additional updates, and we will share the results of the investigation once it is complete." Campbell said he was releasing the information after speaking to the investigating officer in Kunduz. He told reporters that the United States, NATO and Afghanistan were all looking into the bombing. "If there's other investigations out there that need to go on, we'll make sure we coordinate those as well," he said. The NATO-led coalition has said it expects the results of a preliminary multinational investigation in the coming days. The Bombing Doctors Without Borders said its hospital was hit by "a series of aerial bombing raids at approximately fifteen minute intervals" between 2:08 and 3:15 a.m. Saturday. The bombardments continued even after U.S. and Afghan military officials were notified the hospital was under attack, the charity said. On Sunday, the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan said U.S. forces carried out an airstrike at 2:15 a.m. "against insurgents who were directly firing upon U.S. service members advising and assisting Afghan Security Forces." The strike took place "in the vicinity of a Doctors Without Borders medical facility" in Kunduz, it said. The U.S. military had previously said the hospital may have been "collateral damage." But Afghan police in Kunduz said a number of Taliban militants were hiding in the hospital compound when the strike happened. Doctors Without Borders, which denies it lets combatants use its facilities for fighting, said such assertions from Afghan officials imply the hospital bombing was intentional.

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The aid group said it had provided the GPS coordinates of the hospital to the Afghan military and the U.S.-led coalition days before the attack to avoid it being hit. No staff members reported any fighting inside the compound before the airstrike, it said. The Victims People caught up in the blaze set off by the bombing described terrifying scenes. "There are no words for how terrible it was. In the intensive care unit, six patients were burning in their beds," Lajos Zoltan Jecs, a nurse at the hospital, said in an account posted on the Doctors Without Borders website. International staff members were evacuated to Kabul, and critical patients sent to other facilities. Staff members who survived are either being treated at health facilities in the region, the organization reported, or have left the hospital. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called the Doctors Without Borders president Monday to express his solidarity and condolences, according to the French Foreign Ministry. Fabius expressed his hope that light would be shed on the circumstances of the tragedy. The Legal Context Establishing whether the bombing constitutes a war crime, as Doctors Without Borders asserts, will require a detailed picture of what happened. "You cannot, under the laws of war, attack sites such as hospitals, schools, religious buildings," said Gregory Steven Gordon, an associate professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "However, the hospital as a building can lose its immunity if it's being used by the enemy for military attacks." Gordon, a war crimes prosecution expert, told CNN that investigators will need to find out "exactly what kind of attacks were being carried on in the hospital, if any." "The United States, even if attacks were being carried out from the hospital, would have to respect certain principles of precaution," he said. "In other words, they would have to make sure they were using weapons that would be the least destructive, they would have to give warnings to civilians to get them out." The Hospital The bombs left part of the hospital in flames and rubble. "The main hospital building, where medical personnel were caring for patients, was repeatedly and very precisely hit during each aerial raid, while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched," said Christopher Stokes, the aid group's general director. The organization said it has since been forced to close the hospital. "There is no access to trauma care now for the civilians and for the wounded in the whole area of Kunduz, which is some kind of battleground for the moment," Stokes said.

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The Taliban took over Kunduz last week, overrunning a major Afghan city for the first time since 2001. Afghan security forces, backed by the U.S.-led coalition, have been trying to drive out the insurgents. Civilians have been caught in the heavy fighting. Doctors Without Borders said it had treated 394 wounded people in Kunduz in less than a week. At the time of the bombing, 105 patients and their caretakers were in the hospital, along with more than 80 Afghan and international staff members, it said. On Monday, a spokesman for the Kunduz police chief told CNN fighting was underway between the Taliban and Afghan security forces in parts of the city. The fighting is occurring at locations where the Taliban are believed to be hiding inside civilians' houses, the spokesman said.

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AFGHANISTAN: MSF DEMANDS EXPLANATIONS AFTER DEADLY AIRSTRIKES HIT HOSPITAL IN KUNDUZ

Medecins Sans Frontieres∗ Kabul/Brussels. 3 October 2015

[Updated Oct. 4, 2015] Reprinted from http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/afghanistan-msf-demands-

explanations-after-deadly-airstrikes-hit-hospital-kunduz, last visited April 1, 2016. The international medical organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) condemns in the strongest possible terms the horrific aerial bombing of its hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Twelve staff members and at least ten patients, including three children, were killed; thirty-seven people were injured including nineteen staff members. This attack constitutes a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law. All indications currently point to the bombing being carried out by international Coalition forces. MSF demands a full and transparent account from the Coalition regarding its aerial bombing activities over Kunduz on Saturday morning. MSF also calls for an independent investigation of the attack to ensure maximum transparency and accountability. "This attack is abhorrent and a grave violation of International Humanitarian Law," said Meinie Nicolai, MSF President. "We demand total transparency from Coalition forces. We cannot accept that this horrific loss of life will simply be dismissed as 'collateral damage.'" From 2:08 AM until 3:15 AM local time today, MSF's trauma hospital in Kunduz was hit by a series of aerial bombing raids at approximately fifteen minute intervals. The main central hospital building, housing the intensive care unit, emergency rooms, and physiotherapy ward, was repeatedly hit very precisely during each aerial raid, while surrounding buildings were left mostly untouched. "The bombs hit and then we heard the plane circle round," said Heman Nagarathnam, MSF head of programs in northern Afghanistan. "There was a pause, and then more bombs hit. This happened again and again. When I made it out from the office, the main hospital building was engulfed in flames. Those people that could had moved quickly to the building's two bunkers to seek safety. But patients who were unable to escape burned to death as they lay in their beds."

∗ MSF is an international medical organization and first worked in Afghanistan in 1980. MSF opened Kunduz Trauma Center in August 2011 to provide high quality, free medical and surgical care to victims of trauma such as traffic accidents, as well as those with conflict related injuries from bomb blasts or gunshots. In Afghanistan, MSF supports the Ministry of Public Health in Ahmad Shah Baba hospital in eastern Kabul, Dasht-e-Barchi maternity in western Kabul and Boost hospital in Lashkar Gah, Helmand province. In Khost, in the east of the country, MSF runs a maternity hospital. MSF relies only on private funding for its work in Afghanistan and does not accept money from any government.

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The bombing took place despite the fact that MSF had provided the GPS coordinates of the trauma hospital to Coalition and Afghan military and civilian officials as recently as Tuesday, September 29, to avoid that the hospital be hit. As is routine practice for MSF in conflict areas, MSF had communicated the exact location of the hospital to all parties to the conflict. In the aftermath of the attack, the MSF team desperately tried to save the lives of wounded colleagues and patients, setting up a makeshift operating theater in an undamaged room. Some of the most critically injured patients were transferred to a hospital in Puli Khumri, a two hour drive away. "Besides resulting in the deaths of our colleagues and patients, this attack has cut off access to urgent trauma care for the population in Kunduz at a time when its services are most needed," said Nicolai. "Once again, we call on all warring parties to respect civilians, health facilities, and medical staff, according to International Humanitarian Law." Since fighting broke out on Monday, MSF had treated 394 wounded. At the time of the aerial attack there were 105 patients and their caretakers in the hospital, alongside more than 80 international and national MSF staff. MSF expresses its sincere condolences to the families and friends of its staff members and patients who have tragically lost their lives in this attack. MSF's hospital is the only facility of its kind in the north-eastern region of Afghanistan. For four years it has been providing free high level life- and limb-saving trauma care. In 2014, more than 22,000 patients received care at the hospital and more than 5,900 surgeries were performed. MSF treats all people according to their medical needs and does not make any distinctions based on a patient's ethnicity, religious beliefs or political affiliation.

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U.S. GENERAL: HUMAN ERROR LED TO DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS STRIKE Jamie Crawford, Barbara Starr and Jason Hanna

Updated 4:25 PM ET, Wed November 25, 2015 Reprinted from http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/25/politics/afghanistan-kunduz-doctors-without-

borders-hospital/, last visited April 1, 2016 A U.S. airstrike that mistakenly killed thirty people at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, last month was, in part, the result of military personnel inadvertently aiming at the wrong target – the hospital compound – instead of a suspected nearby site, from which Taliban fighters were firing, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Wednesday. The military personnel most closely associated with the strike have been suspended from their duties, pending the full adjudication process, according to Gen. John Campbell, the top NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan. The October 3 mission had several technical and human errors, several administration officials acknowledge. A U.S. military fact-finding investigation into the incident detailed the mistakes and revealed that the U.S. aircraft targeted the wrong facility. "The proximate cause of this tragedy was the direct result of avoidable human error, compounded by process and equipment failures," Campbell told reporters in Kabul Wednesday. "U.S. forces would never intentionally (strike) a hospital" or other protected sites, he said. The report determined that U.S. forces directly involved in the airstrike did not know the compound targeted was the Doctors Without Borders hospital, and that the facility was misidentified as a target by U.S. personnel who believed they were striking a nearby building where there were reports of insurgents taking shelter. It was also found that electronic systems aboard the AC-130 aircraft involved in the strike malfunctioned and prevented crucial command and control functions such as the ability to transmit video and to send or receive email or other electronic messages. Campbell also said the aircrew of the AC-130 believed it was targeted by a missile as it approached Kunduz, thereby forcing it to move eight miles from the initial mission area it was sent to, which hurt the accuracy of some of its targeting systems. The aircrew provided the coordinates of the trauma center – a known protected site – as their intended target one minute prior to firing, the report said. The operational headquarters at Bagram Airfield were aware of the coordinates for the trauma center Campbell said, but "did not realize the grid coordinates for the target matched a location on the no-strike list or that the aircrew was preparing to fire on a hospital." Campbell added that the confusion was exacerbated by the communication malfunctions the aircraft was already experiencing. It also occurred in a nighttime environment.

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However, in the same briefing with reporters, Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner said that the investigation "found that some of the U.S. individuals" involved in the airstrike "did not follow the rules of engagement." The investigation found that Doctors Without Borders told a U.S. military official that their facility was under attack more than ten minutes after the attack began, Campbell said. It took an additional seventeen minutes for U.S. military personnel to realize they were hitting the hospital. The airstrike was over by that time, according to Campbell. Doctors Without Borders, known also by its French name, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), retained its call for an independent investigation that did not include the United States or any other involved party. "The U.S. version of events presented today leaves MSF with more questions than answers," Christopher Stokes, the organization's general director, said in a written statement. "It is shocking that an attack can be carried out when U.S. forces have neither eyes on a target nor access to a no-strike list, and have malfunctioning communications systems." He continued, "It appears that thirty people were killed and hundreds of thousands of people are denied life-saving care in Kunduz simply because the MSF hospital was the closest large building to an open field and 'roughly matched' a description of an intended target." Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, however, said the findings were consistent with a separate NATO-led investigation and that he was "confident" the investigation was carried out in a thorough manner. "Unlike terrorists and enemies of Afghanistan, who deliberately target the civilian population and willingly brutalize innocent men, women, and children, we take great measures to avoid harm to civilians in the course of defending our nation," Ghani said in his own written statement. "This U.S. investigation did not ignore any facts or evidence, admits mistakes that were made, and will enable the authorities to learn from the mistakes and hold people accountable where appropriate." Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have already begun weighing in on the findings. "We have been briefed by General Campbell on his investigation into this troubling incident," Rep. Mac Thornberry, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said in a written statement. "It is clear that process failures on multiple levels were involved," Thornberry said. "We will continue to oversee the investigation as it proceeds, and work closely with our forces in Afghanistan to ensure this tragedy is not repeated." Campbell took the unusual step on Wednesday of releasing a brief summary of the investigation's conclusions. The step is atypical because this type of release of information generally doesn't happen until the military determines if any military personnel will be disciplined or charged with wrongdoing.

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An official familiar with Campbell's thinking said that although authorities are still determining potential disciplinary action, the commander believes the incident is serious and has garnered so much public attention it warrants this step. It will now be up to Campbell to decide whether to take further action himself or refer the matter to the various military services that oversaw the troops involved. He could also decide to take no action. The Pentagon has already concluded that the Doctors Without Borders group that ran the facility had followed all proper procedures in notifying the U.S. of the location of the hospital. The group "did everything right," a U.S. official said last month. Hospitals, like schools and mosques, are prohibited from being attacked by the U.S. military even if there may be militants present. Doctors Without Borders has consistently said there were no Taliban fighters at the hospital on October 3 and that it was a particularly quiet night that followed several days of clashes. Early last month, the Taliban had taken control of Kunduz and Afghan forces were battling them back. The U.S., under current rules of engagement, does not strike Taliban formations unless Afghan security forces are about to be overrun. That night, there were reports of gunfire in the area, which led to a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship being called in. The hospital came under repeated attack even though the medical staff called U.S. military contacts urging them to stop their fire as the attack unfolded. Doctors Without Borders has said the hospital came under attack for an hour.

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U.S. BOMBING OF DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS HOSPITAL RESULT OF "HUMAN ERROR;" THE PENTAGON SAID THE INVOLVED SOLDIERS HAVE BEEN

SUSPENDED Jessica Schulberg, Foreign Affairs Reporter, The Huffington Post

11/25/2015 10:50 am ET | Updated Nov 25, 2015 Reprinted from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/msf-kunduz-human-

error_us_5655d5c8e4b079b28189cf5b, last visited April 1, 2016. WASHINGTON – A Pentagon investigation into the October bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, found the airstrikes to be the result of "human error." The Pentagon has resisted calls for an independent investigation by an outside group into the Oct. 3 airstrikes that killed thirty Doctors Without Borders staff members and patients. On Wednesday, the military announced the conclusion of its own review of the incident. "The report determined that the strike on the trauma center in Kunduz city, Afghanistan, was the direct result of human error compounded by systems and procedural failures," Gen. John F. Campbell, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said during a press briefing at the Pentagon. The U.S. soldiers who executed the airstrikes did not know they were striking a hospital, Campbell said. Instead, they believed they were targeting a different building that is actually hundreds of meters away. But the military's investigation found that both the personnel who called in the airstrikes and those who dropped the bombs "did not undertake the appropriate measures to verify that the facility was a legitimate target." Campbell said the soldiers directly involved in the airstrikes are currently suspended. Doctors Without Borders has said it believes the incident to be war crime. During a thirty-minute briefing, Campbell gave a play-by-play of the events leading up to what he called a "tragic but avoidable accident caused primarily by human error." U.S. special operations forces were deployed to the Kunduz airfield the morning of Sept. 29 and engaged in nearly five consecutive days and nights of heavy fighting against the Taliban, which had recently taken control of the city. Campbell acknowledged receiving coordinates of the Kunduz hospital from Doctors Without Borders on Sept. 29. On the evening of Oct. 3, Afghan forces requested U.S. assistance from the air to clear out a building they suspected was occupied by Taliban insurgents. The AC-130 aircraft that ultimately targeted the Doctors Without Borders hospital took off more than an hour early in response to an emergency "troops in contact" situation. Because of the early takeoff, the plane's crew didn't have the list of no-strike buildings, which included the hospital. Once in flight, some of the plane's electronic systems failed, preventing the crew from transmitting video footage and sending and receiving emails. After believing it was

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targeted by a missile, the crew flew eight miles outside of its regular orbit, which interfered with the aircraft's GPS censors. When the crew entered the GPS coordinates for the building believed to be occupied by the Taliban, the coordinates identified an empty field 300 meters away. Crew members then visually located the nearest large building, which was the Doctors Without Borders hospital. Before striking the hospital, the aircraft got back on its intended path and the GPS coordinates of its target realigned with the correct building. However, the crew did not reassess its target using the coordinates and instead "remained fixated on the physical description of the facility," according to the Department of Defense's findings. Although the original misidentification resulted in part from technical malfunctions on the plane, Campbell conceded that there were signs the crew was zeroing in on the wrong target. In addition to the crew relying primarily on what it had visually identified as the target, the members did not see any conflict from the air. One minute before bombing the hospital, the crew aboard the AC-130 sent headquarters personnel at the Bagram Airfield the GPS coordinates of the building it visually identified as the correct target. The personnel at Bagram then failed to realize the coordinates matched the Doctors Without Borders hospital, which was on its list of protected, no-strike sites. U.S. soldiers began firing on the hospital at 2:08 a.m. Just over ten minutes later, Doctors Without Borders called the U.S. military and said its hospital was under attack. It took until 2:37 a.m. for the military to realize its mistake, Campbell said, adding that the firing had stopped by that time. But a call log released by Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF, shows that the organization called the U.S. military in Kabul at 2:56 a.m. "insisting that the airstrikes stop." The group says it was under fire for nearly an hour. "Our deepest condolences go to all the individuals and families who were affected by this tragic incident," said Campbell, who praised the work of Doctors Without Borders and pledged to help rebuild the destroyed hospital. The U.S. military has also indicated it will provide condolence payments to the victims' families. Although Campbell emphasized that the individuals conducting the military's review were outside of his chain of command, its findings are unlikely to satisfy Doctors Without Borders, which has called for an investigation by an outside group with no connection to the U.S. Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner declined to answer directly when asked if the Pentagon would allow an outside investigation. He instead defended the military's findings. "We believe the investigation completed was full and impartial," he said. But Doctors Without Borders said the military's review left it with more questions than answers.

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"It is shocking that an attack can be carried out when U.S. forces have neither eyes on a target nor access to a no-strike list, and have malfunctioning communications systems," Christopher Stokes, the group's general director, said in a statement. "It appears that thirty people were killed and hundreds of thousands of people are denied life-saving care in Kunduz simply because the MSF hospital was the closest large building to an open field and 'roughly matched' a description of an intended target," he continued. Stokes criticized the military for chalking the October incident up to a breach of U.S. rules of engagement. "The frightening catalogue of errors outlined today illustrates gross negligence on the part of U.S. forces and violations of the rules of war," he said.

Doctors Without Borders

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MORE THAN A DOZEN U.S. MILITARY MEMBERS DISCIPLINED FOR ROLE IN BOMBING DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS HOSPITAL IN AFGHANISTAN

The Associated Press Updated: Thursday, March 17, 2016, 8:22 AM

Reprinted from http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/u-s-soldiers-discplined-bombing-afghanistan-hospital-article-1.2567548, last visited April 1, 2016.

More than a dozen U.S. military personnel have been disciplined – but face no criminal charges – for mistakes that led to the bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital that killed forty-two people in Afghanistan last year, U.S. defense officials say. The punishments, which have not been publicly announced, are largely administrative. But in some cases the actions, such as letters of reprimand, are tough enough to effectively end chances for further promotion. The military has previously said some personnel were suspended from their duties but has given no further details. The disciplined include both officers and enlisted personnel, but officials said none are generals. The officials, who were not authorized to discuss the outcomes publicly and so spoke on condition of anonymity, said the disciplinary process is nearly complete. It is derived from a military investigation of the Oct. 3, 2015, attack, the results of which are expected to be made public in a partially redacted form in coming days. Sandra Murillo, a spokeswoman for Doctors Without Borders, said the charity would not comment on disciplinary actions until the Pentagon communicates its decisions directly to the group or makes a public announcement. The hospital, run by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders in the northern city of Kunduz, was attacked by a U.S. Air Force special operations AC-130 gunship, one of the most lethal in the U.S. arsenal. Doctors Without Borders called the attack "relentless and brutal" and demanded an international investigation, but none has been undertaken. Army Gen. John Campbell, who was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time but has since relinquished command, has called it a "tragic but avoidable accident caused primarily by human error." The attack was unleashed as U.S. military advisers were helping Afghan forces retake Kunduz, which had fallen to the Taliban on Sept. 28. It was the first major city to fall since the Taliban were expelled from Kabul in 2001. Afghan officials claimed the hospital had been overrun by the Taliban, but no evidence of that has surfaced. The hospital was destroyed and Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym, MSF, ceased operations in Kunduz.

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President Barack Obama apologized for the attack, which was one of the deadliest assaults on civilians in the fifteen-year war. The U.S. command in Kabul said in February that it has expressed condolences and offered payment to more than 140 families and individuals affected by the attack. In November the U.S. military provided an outline of what happened. It said the crew of the AC-130 gunship, which is armed with side-firing cannons and guns, had been dispatched to hit a Taliban command center in a different building, 450 yards away from the hospital. However, hampered by problems with their targeting sensors, the crew relied on a physical description that led them to begin firing at the hospital even though they saw no hostile activity there. Many chances to avert the error were missed, officials said. At a November news conference, Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, a spokesman for Campbell, said the actions taken by the U.S. aircrew were "not appropriate" to the threat they faced, suggesting that a number of them could be faulted. Campbell and Shoffner said that neither the U.S. Special Forces commander who called in the strike at the request of Afghan forces, nor the U.S. aircrew, was aware that a hospital was being hit until it was too late. The main U.S. military investigation was completed on Nov. 15 but has not yet been publicly released. U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and across the greater Mideast, rejected in December an AP Freedom of Information Act request for the report, which it said was approximately 5,000 pages long. A separate U.S. report on the incident, obtained last fall by The Associated Press, said the AC-130 aircraft fired 211 shells at the hospital compound over twenty-nine minutes before commanders realized the mistake and ordered a halt. Doctors Without Borders officials contacted coalition military personnel during the attack to say the hospital was "being 'bombed' from the air," and the word finally was relayed to the AC-130 crew, the report said. In an interview with reporters last week, Campbell, who is retiring on May 1, said the fall of Kunduz was a surprise – perhaps even to the Taliban. "They had no clue they were going to take over Kunduz," he said. The insurgents had infiltrated a small number of fighters and attacked a prison in the city, he said. "They got in the prison and the police just kind of left," and so the Taliban decided to keep pressing with the help of other Afghan police who colluded with the Taliban and were "bought off," Campbell said. U.S. special operations forces were then sent to the area in support of Afghan forces.

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U.S. MILITARY PERSONNEL PUNISHED FOR KUNDUZ HOSPITAL ATTACK VOA News

March 18, 2016 5:57 AM Reprinted from http://www.voanews.com/content/us-military-personnel-punished-for-afghan-

hospital-attack/3243296.html, last visited April 1, 2016. Officials say U.S. personnel who were involved in the devastating, half-hour aerial attack on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan have been or will be punished. Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S.-Central Command said "those individuals most closely associated with the incident have been suspended from their duties and were referred for administrative action." The punishments have not been publicly announced, but are reported to include letters of reprimand, which can block promotions. The Defense Department is set to soon publish a redacted version of its investigation of the attack. The attack on the hospital in Kunduz in October killed forty-two people, including medical staff and patients. Army General John Campbell, who was the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time, but has since relinquished command, has said the attack on the hospital was "directly the result of avoidable human error." He called the strike "a tragic mistake." The medical charity Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, has called for an outside, independent investigation of the airstrike, but that has not happened. American forces misidentified a target in Kunduz on October 3 that resulted in the attack on the MSF hospital, according to a U.S. military investigation conducted last year. Afghan forces asked for U.S. air support to strike a National Directorate of Security building believed to be occupied by Taliban fighters. According to the report, the AC-130 air crew instead fired 211 shells at a hospital operated by MSF that was 450 meters away. Several factors contributed to the mistake. The air crew launched more than an hour earlier than planned, missing out on a crucial brief that would normally include identifying no-strike areas such as the MSF hospital. Once in flight, the aircraft's electronic systems malfunctioned, eliminating the crew's ability to transmit video, send and receive email, or send and receive electronic messages. The crew then believed it was the target of a missile, so they moved out of the aircraft's normal strike range, degrading the accuracy of the targeting system. That loss of accuracy appeared to cause the coordinates of the Taliban target to land on an open field. The crew visually located the "closest, largest" building to that field and, thinking that was the target, fired on it.

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MSF said the errors pinpointed in the U.S. report showed "gross negligence" on the part of U.S. forces. Days before the attack, MSF had provided geographic coordinates of its hospital to U.S. military authorities. The barrage on the hospital lasted twenty-nine minutes before commanders realized the mistake, even as hospital staff members made eighteen attempts to call or text U.S. and Afghan authorities about the attack as it was occurring. Many of the doctors and nurses at the hospital were killed instantly, and some patients who could not be moved to safety died in the ensuing flames from the attack. Within days of the October 3 incident, President Barack Obama called Joanne Liu, the president of Doctors Without Borders, to apologize for the mistaken attack.

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NO CRIMINAL CHARGES TO BE FILED IN U.S. BOMBING OF MSF HOSPITAL By Shafaq Hasan | March 18, 2016

March 16, 2016; ABC News (Associated Press) Reprinted from https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2016/03/18/no-criminal-charges-to-be-filed-in-us-

bombing-of-msf-hospital/, last visited April 1, 2016. NPQ has been covering the repercussions of the U.S. bombing of a Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, that killed forty-two people. Since then, while the U.S. officials involved in the bombing have been identified, the question of criminal charges has been up in the air, particularly given the allegations that the bombing was not an accident. We now know that there will not be any criminal charges filed against those responsible, but more than twelve military officials have been reprimanded over the attack that leveled a civilian hospital. According to the Associated Press, the exact nature of the reprimands against the military officers and personnel involved has not been revealed, although it's believed the reprimands have been mostly administrative. For example, they may keep some officials from receiving a promotion in the future. The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time, Army General John Campbell, has since stepped down from his post and will soon be retiring, calling the attack a "tragic but avoidable accident cause primarily by human error." None of the disciplined individuals are generals. Officials have noted that the disciplinary process involving the October attack is almost complete and a redacted report will be made public within a few days. A spokesperson for Doctors Without Borders said she wouldn't comment on the reprimands until a public announcement has been made or until the U.S. government personally contacted the charity. In October, the clinic was bombed in an attack that was later called a "mistake" by President Barack Obama. According to an explanation provided by the U.S. in November, military officials bombed the wrong target, an explanation that was largely insufficient for civil rights groups and Doctors Without Borders. At the time of the attack, the U.S. was aiding Afghan forces in facing the Taliban, which had recently taken Kunduz. The U.S. also offered to pay the families of the victims $6,000 each and survivors of the attack $3,000, which many see as grossly inadequate in proportion to the loss of life. Almost immediately, civil rights groups brought up the issue of accountability. In the past few months, Doctors Without Borders has vehemently condemned the Afghan hospital bombing, which is only one of several bombings of its clinics in the Middle East. "It is unacceptable," said International President of Doctors Without Borders Joanne Liu when President Obama called to apologize, "that the bombing of a hospital and the killing of staff and patients can be dismissed as collateral damage or brushed aside as a mistake." Despite the lack of criminal charges, some may still hope that the U.S. is sanctioned internationally. The charity has asked for an independent war crime investigation to be conducted by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission, which would

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require both Afghanistan and the United States to agree. In December, Human Rights Watch charity also called for a war crime investigation into the attack. In a letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Human Rights Watch's Sarah Margon wrote, "As you know, individuals who commit serious violations of the laws of war with criminal intent – that is, intentionally or recklessly – are responsible for war crimes. As we set out in the appendix, the various public accounts of the incident provided by the U.S. military and MSF to date, as well as other sources, indicate that the events of October 3rd warrant an investigation that considers criminal culpability." – Shafaq Hasan

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