Kunduz Bombing: WikiLeaks Bounty Promises $50k For Anyone With Video, Cockpit Audio

WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization that has leaked hundreds of thousands of secret communications between U.S. government officials, announced a $50,000 bounty for footage of the U.S. bombing of an Afghan hospital in the northwest region of Kunduz. The offer also seeks audio from the cockpit of the AC-130 gunship that partially destroyed the hospital, killing 12 staff members and 10 patients.

“The AC-130 records it attacks with high resolution gun cameras,” WikiLeaks wrote in a post Thursday. “According to military procedure, this footage should have been retained along with cockpit audio. A post-massacre inquiry report referred to as an ‘AR 15-6’ should have also been commissioned. We are raising a U.S. $50,000 bounty to obtain the footage, the cockpit audio, the inquiry report and other relevant materials such as the Rules of Engagement active at the time.”

Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, called on the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to investigate the bombing under the assumption that it was a war crime. American military officials admitted bombs were mistakenly dropped on the medical facility after U.S. Special Forces in the area requested assistance from the AC-130.

“We cannot rely on internal military investigations by the U.S., NATO and Afghan forces,” Doctors Without Borders international chief Joanne Liu told reporters at a news conference in Geneva. “If we let this go, we are basically giving a blank check to any countries at war.”

WikiLeaks is the nonprofit group responsible for a number of high-profile public disclosures. With assistance from former U.S. Army officer Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks orchestrated the release of hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables and documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among that trove was “Collateral Murder,” a U.S. military video recorded from an Apache helicopter during the fatal shooting of Iraqi civilians.

Since then, WikiLeaks has published previously unknown information on the controversial appointment of Saudi Arabia to the United Nations Human Rights Council, recommended Edward Snowden seek asylum in Russia and involved itself in other contentious world events.