US soldier killed Afghan civilians for sport

Afghanistan sunrise

SEATTLE - The soldiers who reported to Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs paint a monstrous picture: He killed Afghan civilians for sport, they say, and encouraged others to do the same.

He also collected fingers of the dead, plotted against his own men and found it amusing to slaughter animals with his assault rifle.

Gibbs is the highest-ranking of five soldiers charged in the murders of three civilians during patrols in Kandahar Province this year in what has emerged as one of the most gruesome cases of the Afghan war.

The 25-year-old from Billings, Montana, was expected to get a chance to contest that portrait yesterday during a military hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord south of Seattle, on charges that include murder, dereliction of duty and trying to impede an investigation.

The probe into the killings started after a witness in a drug investigation, Private 1st Class Justin Stoner, reported being badly beaten by a group of soldiers led by Gibbs.

The private said Gibbs and the other central figure in the case, Specialist Jeremy Morlock, of Wasilla, Alaska, later returned to his room, where Gibbs laid a set of severed fingers on the floor as Morlock warned him not to rat.

"He liked to kill," said Specialist Adam Winfield, who said he tried to blow the whistle on the alleged murder plot before taking part in the final killing. "He manipulated a lot of us into doing what he wanted us to do."

COPIED AND PASTED FROM THIS LINK