By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A United Nations guard killed during a Taliban attack on a U.N. guest-house last year was probably shot dead by an Afghan police officer, not by a militant as originally thought, U.N. officials said on Friday.
If the Afghan police are accused of deliberately killing a U.N. official, it could further damage Afghan President Hamid Karzai's already strained relations with Western powers whose troops have been battling the Taliban for the last nine years.
Louis Maxwell, a U.N. security officer from the United States, was killed in an October 28 attack on an international guest-house where he was with other U.N. employees working on a planned presidential run-off election that never took place.
The official version of Maxwell's death was that he and four other U.N. staff were killed by Taliban insurgents when they attacked the guest-house in an attempt to disrupt the run-off election. Maxwell was using a weapon to drive back the attackers when he was fatally hit by bullets or shrapnel.
But U.N. diplomats and officials familiar with the details of a U.N. investigation said on condition of anonymity that amateur video footage of the attack -- posted on the German magazine Stern's website (http://www.stern.de) -- suggests the official version may be wrong.
The U.N. investigation has received the support of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the officials said. The spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations declined to comment.
U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters on Friday the investigation should be concluded soon. He said it was possible Maxwell was the victim of "friendly fire" -- shot by accident by someone who was supposed to be helping him.
Other U.N. officials said investigators believed Maxwell may have been deliberately killed by an Afghan police officer.
"It's pretty clear it wasn't accidental friendly fire," the official said. "It appears he was deliberately killed, perhaps after being mistaken for an insurgent." Another official said it looked like a "summary execution."
TRAGIC MISTAKE OR MURDER?
Maxwell, an African-American, fell down after he was shot and wounded, the official said. Then an Afghan police officer came up and "finished him off."
Stern magazine said one theory is that the Afghan police officer wanted to steal his sophisticated assault rifle. But a U.N. official said that theory was doubtful.
"You don't want to leave an assault rifle around for the bad guys," a diplomat said. "If they thought he was a Taliban, you'd pick it up."
It could have been a tragic mistake resulting from poor training and incompetence on the part of the Afghan police, officials said. Another said it may have been the summary execution of someone who was clearly a foreigner.
Last year an Afghan army soldier shot dead two U.S. servicemen and wounded a third before killing himself. In Iraq there have been a number of cases where Iraqi policemen or soldiers have deliberately opened fire on U.S. servicemen.
If the investigation concludes that Maxwell was killed deliberately by the Afghan police, the United Nations would strongly protest to the Afghan government, they added.
"We're there to help them," the official said. "We're not the ones they should be killing."
The Taliban said at the time they targeted the guest-house because of the U.N. role in helping organise the run-off election. Karzai was eventually declared the winner without a run-off, despite allegations of widespread voter fraud in the first-round poll in August 2009.
(Editing by John O'Callaghan and Eric Walsh)
