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This is typical of younfsters of today
THE managing director of an East Lancashire farm where 100 chicks were bricked to death said she was ‘absolutely horrified’.
Police believe the birds died when a gang of five teenage boys forced their way into two pens at Knuzden Brook Poultry Farm in Haslingden Old Road on Tuesday night and hit them with bricks and rocks.
Debbie Lyons said: “It’s diabolical. Whoever has done this – they are mindless cowards.
"How can a chick defend itself?
“These children need to be found and stopped. I don’t understand the motivation behind it, except that it’s peer pressure and thinking they look big.
“I really hope that one of them in the gang really regrets doing this and comes forward.
“The thing is, one day it’s chicks, then it could be a cat, then it could escalate and we end up with a child being attacked in a playground.
“This is one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen.”
The gang of five youths, aged around 17 or 18, were spotted outside a chicken pen by farm manager Matthew Hyland, 25, when he pulled his van up in the yard at 8.30pm on Tuesday.
Matthew said: “My passenger ran after the lads, and I drove the van to the next road to see if I could stop them, but they got away.
“It’s awful. We work with these chickens every day, feeding them, making sure they’re all right.”
Matt said: “If the youths had got into our control room and damaged it, then the whole operation would have shut down and with no heating.
"All the chicks would have died within five or 10 minutes.
“It could have cost us hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
Anybody with any information should contact police on 08451 25 35 45 or call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
SEATTLE: A photograph of a US soldier smiling as he posed with the bloodied and partially naked corpse of an Afghan civilian was among those published digitally Sunday by a German news organization, despite attempts by Army officials to keep them under wraps as part of a war crimes probe.
The photos published by Der Spiegel were among several seized by Army investigators looking into the deaths of three unarmed Afghans last year. Five soldiers based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle, have been charged with murder and conspiracy in the case.
Officials involved in the courts-martial had issued a strict protective order, seeking to severely limit access to the photographs due to their sensitive nature. Some defense teams had been granted copies but were not allowed to disseminate them.
It was not immediately known how Der Spiegel obtained copies.
One of the published photographs shows a key figure in the investigation, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock, grinning as he lifts the head of a corpse by the hair. Der Spiegel identified the body as that of Gul Mudin, whom Morlock was charged with killing on Jan. 15, 2010, in Kandahar Province.
Another photo shows Pvt. 1st Class Andrew Holmes holding the head of the same corpse. His lawyer, Daniel Conway, said Sunday that Holmes was ordered ‘‘to be in the photo, so he got in the photo. That doesn’t make him a murderer.’’
The photo was taken while the platoon leader, Lt. Roman Ligsay, was present, Conway said. Ligsay has asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to testify in the legal proceedings against his troops.
Conway sought copies of the photographs so that he could present them to a ballistics expert, who he argued might be able to tell whether the victim had been struck by the weapon Holmes was carrying. His request was rejected.
‘‘I’m very disappointed that in an American judicial proceeding, I have to get potentially exculpatory evidence from a German newspaper,’’ Conway said.
A third photo depicts two apparently dead men propped against a small pillar. Der Spiegel said the photo was seized from a member of the platoon, but did not involve the deaths being investigated as war crimes. Soldiers have told investigators that such photos of dead bodies were passed around like trading cards on thumb drives and other digital storage devices.
‘‘Today Der Spiegel published photographs depicting actions repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army,’’ the Army said in a statement released by Col. Thomas Collins. ‘‘We apologize for the distress these photos cause.’’
The killings at issue occurred during patrols in January, February and May 2010. After the first death, one member of the platoon, Spc. Adam Winfield, sent Facebook messages to his parents, telling them his colleagues had slaughtered one civilian, were planning to kill more and warned him to keep quiet about it.
His father notified a staff sergeant at Lewis-McChord, but no action was taken until May, when a witness in a drug investigation in the unit separately reported the deaths. Winfield is accused of participating in the final killing.
Morlock has given extensive statements claiming the murder plot was led by Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, who maintains the killings were legitimate.
Morlock told investigators he and Holmes shot Mudin without cause; Holmes says that he fired when Morlock told him to, believing that Morlock had perceived a legitimate threat.
Morlock’s court martial was scheduled for Wednesday. He has agreed to plead guilty to murder, conspiracy and other charges and to testify against his co-defendants in exchange for a maximum sentence of 24 years in prison.
One of his lawyers, Geoffrey Nathan, said while Morlock might be ‘‘physically responsible’’ for his crimes, including actions depicted in the photograph, ‘‘the people who are morally responsible are the American leaders who have us in the wrong war at the wrong time.’’
In addition to the five soldiers charged in the deaths, seven soldiers in the platoon were charged with lesser crimes, including assaulting the witness in the drug investigation, drug use, firing on unarmed farmers and stabbing a corpse.
BBC reports that at least 33 civilians were killed in a Nato air strike that included women and children in southern Afghanistan on Sunday.
Nato said it hit a suspected insurgent convoy, but ground forces later found "a number of individuals killed and wounded", including women and children.
The attack, in Uruzgan province, was not part of a major Nato-led offensive in neighbouring Helmand province.
Civilian deaths in air strikes have caused widespread resentment in Afghanistan, and embarrassment to Nato.
Last year, Gen Stanley McChrystal, the Nato and US commander in Afghanistan, introduced much tougher rules of engagement in a bid to minimise such casualties.
The BBC's Chris Morris in Kabul says three vehicles on a road were hit by the strike on Sunday morning. But Sultan Ali, the governor of Uruzgan province, told the BBC all of the dead were civilians.
McCrystal has apologised to President Hamid Karzai and pledged a full investigation into the latest deaths" I have made it clear to our forces that we are here to protect the Afghan people, and inadvertently killing or injuring civilians undermines their trust and confidence in our mission.
These tougher rules of engagement don’t seem to make any difference to fatalities.
Is this just paper exercise? Surely if these rules were being applied then there would be a difference. They keep saying we are here to protect the Afghan people. However they keep making these mistakes again and again and they will keep repeating it unless someone is held accountable. Of course that is not going to happen because Afghan lives are cheap. You can simply write it off as collateral damage and issue an apology. An apology is just meaningless to the people whose loved one have perished because someone else’s mistake. Foreign force are there to protect the Afghan people. Is is how one protects people?
These lives are cheap because they happen to be muslims..
Here is what has happened so far:
Whenever people in Afghanistan read of civilians being killed by foreign military forces, there is going to anger right across the political and social spectrum.