RT: US Obstructing Kandahar Massacre?

The defense lawyer for Robert Bales, who is accused of killing 17 Afghan civilians, is blaming the US for blocking his team's fact-finding mission into the Kandahar incident. He says he can't interview witnesses and prosecutors won't cooperate. John Henry Browne claims US forces in Afghanistan obstructed him and his associates from reaching the injured civilians at a hospital in Kandahar province to interview them about the incident, Reuters reports. Brown also said that after investigators interviewed the injured, they let them go freely with collecting any contact information, making it virtually impossible to find them. He further charges they are not sharing the data which was obtained from the witnesses with his team. He says Bales' defense has only managed to talk to US soldiers in Afghanistan, but not the actual victims of the attack. Browne explains that the military prosecutors who filed the charges against Bales have been possibly unwilling to cooperate because "they are concerned about the strength of their case." The lawyer complained of an "almost complete information blackout from the government, which is having a devastating effect on our ability to investigate the charges preferred against our client." Browne's statements raise even more suspicion about whether the US really wants to punish the guilty party to the fullest extent of the law, or if the government is concealing some ugly truth about the Kandahar massacre. An independent Afghan probe into the killings alleges that up to 20 US soldiers were involved.