One official who had seen the video said “it looks like an execution”.
Mr Maxwell came down from the roof after the attack and was shot minutes later officials said.
The video shows Mr Maxwell wounded in a group of Afghan police when a single shot is fired, Stern reported.
He screams and collapses to the ground. None of the police reacts.
Three more shots are fired, then a policeman takes Mr Maxwell’s weapon from next to his corpse and leaves.
The motivation for the shooting is unclear from the video and an official said it was possible police had mistaken Mr Maxwell, an African American, for a foreign terrorist.
Stern reported another theory was that the Afghan police officer wanted to steal his sophisticated assault rifle.
*****
What I would like investigators to talk about is the video that was taken of the whole thing. If the video ‘looks like an execution’, then that should throw up some red flags. Read the initial report based off of what was seen in the video, and this does not at all match up with what the UN briefing is talking about? Where is this video and where is Louis’ HK G36 rifle? Someone please make sense of all of this, because this smells.
I also want to direct the readership to a guy that was within 50 meters of this incident when it happened and has been writing about it in his blog called Knights of Afghanistan. Both he and Tim Lynch have talked about the rifle and the possible motivation of the police to kill Louis for that rifle. Or how a convenient friendly fire accident could help put that rifle into an officer’s hands. I guess there could be confusion as well, but take a good look at the picture below and tell me that Louis looks like a Taliban or Al Qaeda operative. I didn’t know the booger eaters were carrying high end 5.56 HK’s with ACOGs mounted these days? Who knows, but I do know that there is video that needs to be looked at by some independent media out there, or a third party investigator.
Louis is a veteran (former Navy) and a contractor that laid down his life in the defense of others. The main stream media might not care about the sacrifice of this contractor, but we do. It is the least we can do, to make sure the story gets straight and the truth gets out there.-Matt
Edit: 04/28/2010- Here is the cellphone video of the incident. Louis looks like he was leaning against the hood of the Vehicle and possibly wounded already, and officers were walking away with his weapon. Then he was shot at multiple times until he went down. If you look at the police around him, they are not looking in the direction of the sniper or combatant shooting at Louis, they are looking at Louis as he is being killed. The officer holding Louis’s gun is not running away or taking cover, nor are any of the other officers. They are just standing around and watching Louis get killed. Watch the video and let me know what you think?
I also found the press briefing the UN secretary gave in regards to Maxwell’s death and his weapon. They do have his weapon in their control. Why this took so long to come out, I do not know. They have been pressed about the location of the weapon in other briefings, without any clarification.
Edit: 04/29/2010- I made a mistake about the designation of G36, and I apologize. Sometimes I miss this stuff. It appears that the rifle is not a K version, but a C version. Thanks to my readership for catching this, and giving me the heads up. Here is the definition of the C version from wikipedia:
G36C: This subcarbine (C—compact) model is a further development of the G36K. It has a shorter barrel (than the G36K), and a four-prong open-type flash hider. The extremely short barrel forced designers to move the gas block closer to the muzzle end and reduce the length of the gas piston operating rod. The handguard and stock were also shortened and the fixed carry handle (with optics) was replaced with a carrying handle with an integrated MIL-STD-1913 Picatinny rail. The dual optical sight found on the standard G36 and G36K models was replaced with a set of rail-mounted detachable iron sights that consist of a semi-shrouded front post and a flip-up rear sight with two apertures of different diameter. The short handguard has six accessory attachment points, one of which could be used for a vertical grip.
Edit: 04/30/2010 – Louis Maxwell was not a Marine, and according to news out of Miami in his obituary, he was in the Navy. I have no clue what his MOS was, and maybe he was attached to the Marines at one point or another. Who knows. Here is the report.
G36K up top, G36C on bottom.
Louis Maxwell, Navy.
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HK G36C with ACOG scope…In the hands of hero Louis Maxwell.
Afghan police likely killed U.N. staff by mistake: U.N.
By Louis CharbonneauMonday, April 26, 2010
United Nations investigators believe that Afghan police mistakenly shot and killed four U.N. employees during a Taliban attack in October 2009, U.N. officials said on Monday.
Susana Malcorra, a top U.N. peacekeeping official, made the remark in a briefing about a U.N. board of inquiry into an October 28 Taliban attack on a guest-house in Kabul that resulted in the deaths of five U.N. employees.
She described confusing circumstances in which Taliban attackers and Afghan security forces who responded were dressed in identical police uniforms.
It was a “very, very chaotic situation in the middle of the night,” she said.
Investigators believe three U.N. employees were shot and killed by the Afghan police while trying to escape from the guest-house, Malcorra said.
(more…)