Accused Taliban fighter says U.S. helicopters killed insurgents ‘like insects’

U.S. helicopters gunned down Taliban fighters “like insects” during a failed 2009 attack in Afghanistan, an accused Taliban fighter said in a videotaped interview with the FBI shown during his trial on Wednesday. Irek Hamidullin, a former Soviet tank officer who converted to Islam, is charged with coordinating the November 2009 attack on an Afghan Border Police base. He is the first Afghan War military combatant to be tried in U.S. federal court. Hamidullin called off the assault after insurgents’ weapons malfunctioned, and his roughly 30 men fell back, he told the FBI in a videotaped 2010 interview. Shortly afterward, U.S. reconnaissance and Apache attack helicopters swooped in.

Helicopters shoot us like insects.

Hamidullin said.

Hamidullin, who was born in 1959, was charged last year with 15 criminal counts ranging from supporting terrorists to firearms offenses stemming from the assault in eastern Afghanistan’s Khost province. Hamidullin has repeatedly insisted during 15 separate interviews with the FBI that he never fired his own AK-47 during the attack on Camp Leyza in Afghanistan’s Khost Province. He was held by the Pentagon in an Afghan prison for five years before being brought to the United States for trial. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

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