2nd sailor dead in Afghanistan

Body pulled from river; why 2 were in volatile area a mystery

An Afghan fireman works to extinguish a burning oil tanker after an explosive device planted underneath it exploded, near a NATO air base in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, on Thursday.
An Afghan fireman works to extinguish a burning oil tanker after an explosive device planted underneath it exploded, near a NATO air base in Jalalabad, east of Kabul, on Thursday.

— The discovery of the body of a second U.S. sailor who vanished in Afghanistan last week only deepened the mystery of the men’s disappearance nearly 60 miles from their base in a dangerous area controlled by the Taliban.

An investigation is under way, but with both sailors dead, U.S. authorities remained at a loss Thursday to explain what two junior enlisted men in noncombat jobs were doing driving alone in Logar province, where much of the countryside is not under government control.

“This is like a puzzle,” said Abdul Wali, deputy head of the governing council in Logar.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Justin McNeley - father of two boys ages 5 and 9 - from Kingman, Ariz., and Petty Officer 3rd Class Jarod Newlove, 25, from the Seattle area, disappeared in the province last Friday. McNeley’s body was recovered there Sunday, and Newlove’s body was pulled from a river Wednesday evening, Afghan officials said.

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The U.S. Navy confirmed Newlove’s death Thursday.

At the Newlove’s house in west Seattle, where children’s chalk drawings adorned the sidewalk, a big sign on the door said: “The family has no comment. Please respect our privacy.”

Newlove’s father, Joseph Newlove, broke the silence briefly to tell a TV station that his son’s duties were limited to Kabul and to wonder why he would have been so far off base.

“He had never been out of that town,” the elder Newlove told KOMO-TV in Seattle. “So why would he go out of that town? He wouldn’t have.”

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Officials at the NATO-led coalition headquarters in Kabul have not offered an explanation as to why the two service members were driving a heavily armored vehicle so far from their base at Camp Julien, a training facility on the western edge of the city.

A NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case was being investigated, said it was unclear what the two were doing, what prompted them to leave their compound or whether they were on official business.

Senior military officials in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the sailors were never assigned anywhere near where their bodies were found.

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The NATO official in Kabul denied speculation that the two had been abducted in Kabul and driven to Logar, the same province where New York Times reporter David Rohde was kidnapped in late 2008 while trying to make contact with a Taliban commander. Rohde and an Afghan colleague escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity, most spent in Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.

Din Mohammed Darwesh, spokesman for the provincial governor of Logar, said the governor’s office was upset because the two Americans left their base without notifying Afghan security forces in Logar, which is the normal protocol. He called their presence in Logar an “abnormal situation.”

The international force quickly launched a search for the sailors, setting up checkpoints and distributing hundreds of fliers, with reprinted photos of the two missing sailors. The fliers offered a $20,000 reward for information about their whereabouts.

The Taliban did not claim responsibility for the missing sailors for more than 48 hours after the sailors disappeared. A message posted on the Taliban website late Sunday claimed one American service member had been kidnapped in Logar and another was killed in a shootout.

On Thursday, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the Taliban on Tuesday left the “body of a dead American soldier for the U.S. forces” to find.

U.S. officials did not provide details about how either sailor might have died. Darwesh, the provincial spokesman, said Newlove was shotonce in the head and twice in the torso.

Mohammad Rahim Amin, local government chief in Baraki Barak, said villagers in the district called to report the body of a foreigner, clad in a uniform, in the river. He said coalition forces found it about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. He speculated that the bodyfloated downstream because the river was swollen by rain Tuesday night.

Amin said that in recent days, security tightened around the Taliban, who were under pressure from Afghan forces, intelligence officials and coalition troops converging on the area in the search for the missing service member.

“It makes sense that the Taliban had nowhere to go, so they killed him,” Amin said, referring to Newlove.

Newlove joined the Navy in March 2004, completed his duty and joined the Reservesin December 2008. He was called back to duty and was in Afghanistan by December 2009. He was trained as a culinary specialist, but it was unclear whether he was working at that job in Kabul.

McNeley joined the Navy in 2001 and deployed to Afghanistan last year. He was classified as a hull technician. The job entails skilled metalwork to maintain ships.

Information for this article was contributed from Kabul by Rahim Faiez and from Seattle by Donna Gordon Blankinship of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 07/30/2010

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