Lawyer: ‘Preposterous’ to blame Afghan man in US war deaths

By LARRY NEUMEISTER
Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The lawyer for an Afghan commander awaiting trial in Manhattan federal court says it’s preposterous to charge his client in the killing of three American soldiers. Attorney Mark Gombiner spoke Friday at a pretrial hearing after Haji Najibullah pleaded not guilty to charges in a rewritten indictment against him. Najibullah was already charged in the 2008 gunpoint kidnapping of a New York Times reporter and another journalist. But an indictment returned last week accused him of commanding the Taliban fighters behind a fatal ambush of the three servicemen in Afghanistan in 2008.