German Troops Pose With Afghan Skulls

Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed disgust Wednesday at photos that appeared to show German troops in Afghanistan posing with a human skull and pledged that any soldiers found to be involved would be punished severely.

The macabre pictures were printed Wednesday by Germany's biggest-selling daily, Bild, which said they showed German peacekeepers near the capital, Kabul, in early 2003.

The uniformed men were seen holding up the skull and posing with it on a jeep; one is seen exposing himself with the skull. Bild's headline declared: "German soldiers desecrate a dead person."

The newspaper said it was unclear where the skull came from, but cited an unidentified serviceman as saying it may have come from a suspected "mass grave" outside Kabul.

Bild, which would not identify the source of the photos, said it was unclear whether the skull belonged to an Afghan or dated back to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

"We all saw pictures today that are shocking, that are repugnant and that can be excused by nothing," Merkel said during a speech in Berlin. "The government will investigate the soldiers who play a role and act with full severity."

Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung earlier told reporters that "we are conducting the investigation at full steam." If the incident is confirmed, he added, those involved will face "disciplinary or even criminal measures."

"Anyone who behaves this way has no place in the Bundeswehr," the German military, Jung said.

Military chief of staff Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhan said two possible suspects had been identified and were being questioned. One of them is still with the Bundeswehr, and the other has left the army, he said.

Prosecutors in Potsdam, where the military has its command center for deployments abroad, opened an investigation after the pictures were published for possible charges of disturbing the peace of the dead, spokesman Wilfried Lehmann said.

Germany is proud of its post-World War II military training rules, which reflect lessons drawn from the Nazi era by urging soldiers to take responsibility for their actions.

Jung said the incident shown in the photos is "diametrically opposed to the values and ways of behavior" that German troops are taught in training.

Germany currently has more than 2,800 troops in NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, serving in Afghanistan's relatively calm north.

The incident "naturally is not representative — it is not representative for the Bundeswehr and it is not representative for NATO," the alliance's secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said during a visit to Berlin. "But I repeat what the chancellor said: It is unacceptable."

Claudia Roth, a leader of Germany's opposition Greens, said on n-tv television that "such photos are dangerous for security in Afghanistan."

However, Jung said he hoped the photos would not complicate efforts to win over Afghan civilians.

"One has to see one thing clearly — so far, the mission we have been carrying out in the north has met with broad approval from the population," he said.

Wednesday's photos came a week after lawmakers decided to investigate unrelated allegations that German special forces in Afghanistan abused a prisoner who later spent years in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turk, has claimed that two German soldiers came to interrogate him at a camp near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2002 and slammed his head into the ground.

The Defense Ministry has said that German soldiers questioned about the allegations recalled the presence of a German-speaker among prisoners they helped guard near Kandahar, but that the only contact they remembered was one soldier calling out to the man.