By DPA,
Berlin : The US Army issued an apology Monday following the publication by German news magazine Der Spiegel of photographs of US soldiers posing with the corpses of Afghan civilians they are accused of killing.
Currently 12 men are on trial in the US city of Seattle in connection with atrocities allegedly committed by a unit at the Ramrod forward operating base in 2010.
The pictures, allegedly taken by the soldiers with their private cameras and circulated digitally within the unit, had not been published by media before.
Spiegel printed three images as part of an eight-page feature article on the defendants and the evidence given at trial.
Two of the images were captioned as depicting Jeremy N. Morlock and Andrew Holmes, holding up the head of a dead man by the hair. The other showed two corpses bound together back-to-back.
“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 statement by colonel Thomas Collins said. “We apologise for the distress these photos cause.”
Morlock, Holmes, and three other soldiers are accused of the pre-meditated murders of three Afghan men in 2010.
Der Spiegel, a weekly, said the photos were seized from another member of their brigade. It released the pictures in its print edition but did not place the story on its website.