WASHINGTON: No military personnel involved in a failed drone attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, which killed 10 civilians will face any sentence after US defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved a recommendation from two senior commanders, a senior Pentagon official said.
The Pentagon admitted in September that the last US drone attack before American forces resigned from Afghanistan was a tragic error that killed civilians, including seven children, after initially said that it was needed to prevent an attack on the group of Islamic countries.
The next high level investigation into episodes did not find violations of the law but stopped completely freeing them involved, said it was a “business commander”.
Austin left the last word in any administrative action, such as reprimanding or demotion, up to two senior commanders – General Kenneth F Mckenzie Jr, Head of the Military Central Command, and General Richard D Clarke, Head of Special Operations Command.
Both officers found no reason to punish one of the military personnel involved in the episode, the Pentagon official said.
In two decades of war against enemies such as Al-Qaeda and is, the US military has killed hundreds, if not thousands, civilians accidentally in war zones such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.
And while the military from time to time accepts responsibility for wrong air strikes or raids of land that endangers civilians, rarely do it with certain individual accountability.
The latest exceptions that most prominent for this trend occurred in 2016, when the Pentagon catoplined at least a dozen military personnel over air strikes in 2015 in a doctor without Hospital borders in Kunduz which killed 42 people.
But there is no criminal charges.
Critics slammed decisions.
“It’s surprising,” said Steven Kwon, President of Nutrition & International Education, a relief organization that employs a Toyota sedan driver who was shocked by US drones.