Twelve American soldiers face trial over an secret “kill team” that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies. Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven other soldiers are accused of covering up the killings as well as a violent assault on a new recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians. Following the arrest of the original five accused in June, seven other soldiers were charged last month with attempting to cover up the killings, blocking the investigation and violent assault on the soldier who reported the smoking of hashish. The 74 charges against the 12 soldiers include accusations of illegal drug and alcohol use.

KLEWTv reports:

At least two of the five Army soldiers charged in the deaths of three Afghan civilians had kept body parts taken from Afghan corpses, according to new documents released by the Army on Wednesday.

At least 11 of the 17 members of the Afghan military who went AWOL from an Air Force base in Texas and are considered deserters by their nation have turned up in the exact place you’d expect to find them in the year 2010. They’re on Facebook. . . . One week later, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement source told FoxNews.com that only two or three of the 17 Afghans remain at large. The source said investigators have been working with Canadian immigration records and now believe that many of the men are in Canada. David Smith, spokesman for Randolph Air Force Base in Texas, told FoxNews.com he was told that four of the men remain unaccounted for. Of the 13 who have been located, he said, six have pending refugee claims in Canada, two have permanent residency in Canada, four are in the process of being deported and one is a conditional resident alien in the U.S.

Texas senator is demanding answers from the Air Force on the current status of the 10 AWOL Afghan military deserters, which he called a breach of national security.

The initial number of Afghans being floated was 17. Now:

Ten of the 17 remain at large after seven were accounted for, sources close to the situation told Fox News on Friday. The most recent Afghan to disappear from Lackland was First Lt. Javed Aryan, who went AWOL in January 2010, Emery told FoxNews.com. The others listed in the NCIS report disappeared at various times last year. Sources also said that as of November 2009, one of the deserters was in Canada, one is now a lawful permanent resident in the U.S., one has left the country and another four are in federal custody and in removal proceedings. The other 10 remain unaccounted for.

Officials note that:

“In 2009, the Defense Language Institute English Language Center reported two other students from countries other than Afghanistan went missing,” he told FoxNews.com. “They include one Iraqi who requested asylum in Houston and one Djiboutian whose status is unknown. To date in 2010, one student from Tunisia and one from Guinea Bissau have gone AWOL in addition to the Afghani student [Aryan] who went AWOL in January. “To put these numbers in perspective,” Emery said, “more than 3,400 international students entered training at DLI in 2009, including 228 from Afghanistan.”

The names and date of birth of the missing is listed here.

Military.com has this piece of information which is a little different but nuanced than other reports.

Emery said it is rare for DLI students to go AWOL but it happens. An Iraqi soldier disappeared in 2009 but turned up in Houston where he asked for asylum rather than return to Iraq. A soldier from Djibouti also went missing in 2009. This year one soldier each from Tunisia and Guinea Bissau have gone AWOL.

Before it’s News now is tying this incident with this:

In late January, Senators were warned that Al Qaeda is determined to stage an attack on U.S. soil by July 2010. This information circled the media for some time, as they continually pumped images of Al Qaeda onto newscasts around the world. If this “threat” holds true than we only have 13 days left until a major attack.

Here is Politics Daily:

A nationwide alert has been issued in hopes of locating 17 members of the Afghan military being trained at a Texas Air Force base, all of whom have gone missing over the past few years. At the time of their disappearances, the men were learning English as they trained to become pilots. “I can confirm that 17 have gone missing from the Defense Language Institute,” Gary Emery, chief of public affairs, 37th Training Wing, at the Lackland Air Force Base, told Fox News. “They disappeared over the course of the last two years, and none in the last three months.”

San Antonio News reports that:

Disappearances like the ones at the DLI haven’t been uncommon. But Emery noted that around 3,400 international students attended the Lackland school last year, including 228 from Afghanistan. Of those, the 16 Afghans went AWOL along with the Iraqi and one from Djibouti. Two from Tunisia have gone missing this year along with another from Guinea-Bissau in West Africa.

A nationwide alert has been issued for 17 members of the Afghan military who have gone AWOL from a Texas Air Force base where foreign military officers who are training to become pilots are taught English, FoxNews.com has learned. . . . A senior Defense Department official in Washington told Fox News he had no direct knowledge of the 17 men being AWOL. The official added that this is not the first time foreign trainees have gone missing, and said some cases in the past have turned out to be more of an immigration concern than a national security threat.

Fox5News (Las Vegas) reports:

The Army isn’t saying what motivated the killings of three Afghan civilians, whose deaths have led to charges against a Nevada soldier and four others from Washington state’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The Army’s charging documents say all three of the victims were shot and two of them were hit by grenades in separate incidents in Kandahar Province earlier this year.

Seattle Times reports:

Five soldiers accused of murdering three Afghan civilians earlier this year allegedly threw grenades at them and shot them with rifles, according to charging papers released Wednesday by Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Two of the soldiers also are accused of beating a fellow soldier who might have been an informant, while a third is accused of trying to impede the investigation by asking a colleague to erase a computer hard drive which contained evidence of the crimes.