It was difficult enough for the people of western Kandahar province. They are beleaguered both by the Taliban, who control the roads, demand taxes and execute anyone suspected of disloyalty, and by the U.S. military, who often show little regard for people and whose demands that locals stand up to the insurgents seem unreasonable. Still, there was no reason to anticipate something far worse: U.S. soldiers suspected of being a sadistic rogue band led by Sgt. Calvin Gibbs. For Allah Dad, a poppy farmer and the mullah of a hamlet of just 15 homes in Kandahar province, the end came quickly. He was sipping tea when he heard screams, and several of his children ran in. U.S. soldiers in tanks were coming, they told him. Moments later, two young soldiers came in and grabbed him, his wife, Mora, said. 'In a minute I heard shooting,' she said. 'I saw my husband face down, and a black American stood next to him. Another soldier pushed me away. They pushed me back into the house and the interpreter made me go inside one of the rooms. 'Minutes after that I heard an explosion,' she said. 'I rushed out of that inner room and out the gate and the translator was telling me to stop, but I did not pay any attention, and then I saw my husband, my husband was burning.' According to court papers filed by the military, Mullah Dad, 45, of the Kalagi hamlet, was the third victim of soldiers who killed Afghan civilians for no apparent reason. Five of the platoon soldiers have been charged in at least three murders, one of them Mullah Dad's, and seven other soldiers have been charged with crimes including assault, the use of hashish and attempts to impede the investigation. Mora Dad described how the soldiers searched the family's house, apparently trying to justify the killing. 'They tore and broke everything,' she said. 'But they did not find a single bullet in my home.' Later, Mora Dad's father, Abdullah Jan, and two tribal elders listened in disbelief to an Afghan intelligence agent at the district governor's office as he related his conversation with U.S. soldiers when they handed over Mullah Dad's body. 'He told me that the Americans claimed that Allah Dad had a grenade and was going to attack them, and then the grenade went off and he was killed,' said Jan. 'I tried to explain his background, that he was a mullah in his village mosque, he had no link with the Taliban and he didn't want one. 'They put the grenade under his body,' he said. An hour later, Jan said, he picked up his son-in-law's body and was shocked to find that it was wrapped in a black plastic bag. 'It was treated like garbage,' he said. Just a mile or two from Kalagi, near the village of Karez, another man died almost the same way. 