German federal prosecutor to investigate Kunduz airstrike colonel

Nov 6, 2009, 9:12 GMT

Berlin - The German federal prosecutor is to investigate the case of Colonel Georg Klein, who ordered an airstrike in Afghanistan in which dozens of civilians are thought to have died, prosecutors said Friday.

Local prosecutors in the city of Dresden passed the case to Germany's highest prosecution office to ascertain if international law covered the incident. So far, Berlin has not officially designated the Afghan conflict as a 'war' or 'armed conflict.'

The prosecutors need to know this before deciding if Klein may have committed a crime.

In a statement, they said it was conceivable that an armed conflict in the legal sense was taking place and that the airstrike had been part of it. 'That would mean that military operations in conformity with international law and under the UN mandate were basically legitimate,' the statement said.

Klein ordered two hijacked oil tankers to be destroyed by US fighter bombers in the Kunduz region on September 4.

A report to Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated in mid-September that 30 civilians and 69 Taliban fighters were killed in the strike.

A NATO report issued Thursday in Brussels criticized the commander for ordering the strike, saying he should only have done so if his troops were in direct danger, which it judged was not the case.

German Defence Minister German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is to present the report to parliamentary officials in Berlin later on Friday.

Defence Ministry officials had previously defended Klein, and denied that the NATO inquiry placed blame on the German troops.