History > 2007 > USA > Military justice (I)

Marine Awaits Sentencing

in Murder Plot

July 20, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:50 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) -- Getting into the Marine Corps from the rough St. Louis suburb where he grew up was Cpl. Trent Thomas' reward for making the right decisions in life.

''I got out of the hood where we were,'' he told a military jury. ''I was like, yo, thank you Jesus, I'm one of the Marines!''

On Friday, jurors were to begin deliberating Thomas' sentence for taking part in the death of a retired Iraqi policeman on the night of April 26, 2006, after a failed attempt to abduct and kill a suspected insurgent.

Thomas, a 25-year-old father of two, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole after being convicted Wednesday of kidnapping and conspiracy to murder. He was acquitted of the most serious charge of premeditated murder, which would have carried a mandatory life sentence, and of lesser offenses including making a false official statement, housebreaking and larceny.

Prosecutors recommended Thomas be sentenced to 15 years in prison with a dishonorable discharge, reduction in pay and forfeiture.

''It's not OK as a corporal of the Marines to not stand up when something is patently illegal,'' Lt. Col. John Baker told jurors.

Thomas' attorneys argued that their client was following orders from his squad leader, and asked that he be credited for the 519 days he has already served in the brig and returned to active duty.

''We failed him as a Marine Corps, because under good leadership, this Marine would not be here today,'' Maj. Haytham Faraj said. ''Consider where the responsibility lies.''

Thomas told the court Thursday he wants to continue his service.

''I've never been good at anything until I came to the Marine Corps,'' said Thomas, who served three combat tours in Iraq and was awarded a Purple Heart for fighting in the 2004 siege on Fallujah. ''It's pretty obvious Michael Jordan was meant to play basketball. Tiger Woods was meant to play golf. The Marine Corps, it's me.''

Earlier in the day, Thomas' sister testified about their difficult upbringing in the St. Louis area. The Marine's wife, Erica, also spoke, saying she wanted her husband out of the brig.

''I would like him to come home,'' she said.

Thomas, of Madison, Ill., was among seven Marines and a Navy corpsman accused of snatching 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad from his house, marching him to a nearby ditch and shooting him after they botched an attempt to capture another man. Prosecutors said squad members tried to cover up the killing by planting a shovel and AK-47 by Awad's body to make it look like he was an insurgent planting a bomb.

Thomas was the senior corporal in the squad and a fireteam leader.

He was the first member of his squad whose case went to court-martial. Four other Marines and the sailor pleaded guilty to reduced charges in exchange for testimony. They received between one and eight years in the brig.

Thomas agreed in January to plead guilty to unpremeditated murder, kidnapping, conspiracy and other charges. He stunned the court by withdrawing his guilty plea on the eve of sentencing in February and going to court-martial on the more severe charge of premeditated murder.

The final terms of Thomas' punishment are subject to review by Lt. Gen. James Mattis, the commanding general overseeing the case.

Courts-martial have been scheduled for the two Marines remaining in the case -- Cpl. Marshall L. Magincalda on Friday and of squad leader Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III next week.

    Marine Awaits Sentencing in Murder Plot, NYT, 20.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marines-Iraq-Shooting.html

Marine: Ordered to Raise Violence Level

July 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:52 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) -- A Marine corporal testifying in a court-martial said Marines in his unit began routinely beating Iraqis after officers ordered them to ''crank up the violence level.''

Cpl. Saul H. Lopezromo testified Saturday at the murder trial of Cpl. Trent D. Thomas.

''We were told to crank up the violence level,'' said Lopezromo, testifying for the defense.

When a juror asked for further explanation, Lopezromo said: ''We beat people, sir.''

Within weeks of allegedly being scolded, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman went out late one night to find and kill a suspected insurgent in the village of Hamandiya near the Abu Ghraib prison. The Marines and corpsman were from 2nd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment.

Lopezromo said the suspected insurgent was known to his neighbors as the ''prince of jihad,'' and had been arrested several times and later released by the Iraqi legal system.

Unable to find him, the Marines and corpsman dragged another man from his house, fatally shot him, and then planted an AK-47 assault rifle near the body to make it appear he had been killed in a shootout, according to court testimony.

Four Marines and the corpsman, initially charged with murder in the April 2006 killing, have pleaded guilty to reduced charges and been given jail sentences ranging from 10 months to eight years. Thomas, 25, from St. Louis, pleaded guilty but withdrew his plea and is the first defendant to go to court-martial.

Lopezromo, who was not part of the squad on its late-night mission, said he saw nothing wrong with what Thomas did.

''I don't see it as an execution, sir,'' he told the judge. ''I see it as killing the enemy.''

He said Marines consider all Iraqi men part of the insurgency.

Lopezromo and two other Marines were charged in August with assaulting an Iraqi two weeks before the killing that led to charges against Thomas and the others. Charges against all three were later dropped.

Thomas' attorneys have said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury from his combat duty in Fallouja in 2004. They have argued that Thomas believed he was following a lawful order to get tougher with suspected insurgents.

Prosecution witnesses testified that Thomas shot the 52-year-old man at point-blank range after he had already been shot by other Marines and was lying on the ground.

Lopezromo said a procedure called ''dead-checking'' was routine. If Marines entered a house where a man was wounded, instead of checking to see whether he needed medical aid, they shot him to make sure he was dead, he testified.

''If somebody is worth shooting once, they're worth shooting twice,'' he said.

The jury is composed of three officers and six enlisted personnel, all of whom have served in Iraq. The trial was set to resume Monday.

    Marine: Ordered to Raise Violence Level, NYT, 15.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marines-Iraq-Shooting.html

Officer Advises Against Trial for Marine

July 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:00 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- An investigating officer has recommended dismissing murder charges against a Marine accused in the slayings of three Iraqi men in a squad action that killed 24 civilians in Haditha, according to a report released Tuesday.

The government's theory that Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharratt had executed the three men was ''incredible'' and relied on contradictory statements by Iraqis, Lt. Col. Paul Ware said in the report, released by Sharratt's defense attorneys.

''To believe the government version of facts is to disregard clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, and sets a dangerous precedent that, in my opinion, may encourage others to bear false witness against Marines as a tactic to erode public support of the Marine Corps and mission in Iraq,'' Ware wrote.

Defense attorneys James Culp and Gary Myers said in a statement that he was pleased with the report and that it ''reflected the value of the calm of a courtroom and the adversarial process.''

Sharratt's mother Theresa said she was overjoyed.

''This is a huge result, that report is a declaration of Justin's innocence,'' she said. ''This is very, very good news.''

The recommendation is nonbinding. A final decision about whether Sharratt should stand trial will be made by Lt. Gen. James Mattis, the commanding general overseeing the case.

It is the second time an investigating officer has recommended charges not continue to trial in the killings. In the case of Marine lawyer Capt. Randy W. Stone, the investigating officer recommended his dereliction of duty charge be dealt with administratively.

Three enlisted men are charged with murder and four officers are accused of failing to investigate the killings. On Nov. 19, 2005, a roadside bomb blast killed one Marine and in the aftermath other members of his squad killed two dozen Iraqis, including women and children in their homes.

Prosecutors at Sharratt's preliminary hearing introduced several accounts from Iraqis that said Sharratt had separated four men from a group of women and children and ordered them into a house. There, in a bedroom, he shot three of them and when he ran out of bullets the squad leader Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich allegedly shot the fourth.

Sharratt's case is the first of the three men who are charged with murder to go to a hearing known as an Article 32 investigation, the military equivalent of a grand jury.

    Officer Advises Against Trial for Marine, NYT, 11.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marines-Haditha.html

Vet Who Was AWOL Won't Be Courtmartialed

July 7, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:27 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- An Iraq war veteran will not be court-martialed for leaving his post without permission for 15 months to undergo treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, the Army said.

Instead of facing a bad conduct discharge -- a felony punishable by up to a year in military prison -- Spc. Eugene Cherry admitted he was absent without leave and was granted a general discharge, rather than an honorable discharge, the Army said Friday.

''It really wasn't about proving I went AWOL -- that's a given,'' Cherry said in a telephone interview from Fort Drum in northern New York.

Cherry, 24, was to be tried by court-martial Monday, encountered horrific battle experiences during 13 months as a combat medic in Iraq. Five months after his return in June 2005, he says he went home to Chicago to find mental health treatment after the Army failed to provide him with adequate help.

When he came back to Fort Drum in March to resolve his Army status, Cherry was restricted to his post and later told he would be court-martialed.

''He was receiving medical care'' at Fort Drum, Army spokesman Ben Abel said. ''He may not have felt that it was adequate ... but it's not an excuse for leaving a unit for that length of time.''

In Chicago, Cherry was treated by Dr. Hannah Frisch, a clinical psychologist who diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression. In a report prepared for his commanders, she said he needed intensive, individualized psychotherapy, not just drugs, to treat his condition.

During his Iraq tour with the 10th Mountain Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, Cherry regularly saw the burned and charred bodies of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi citizens and developed an obsessive fear of being kidnapped and beheaded, according to Frisch's report.

Cherry saw a military psychologist and was prescribed anti-depression medication. Back at Fort Drum, he said he sought counseling but experienced only postponements and rescheduling. On returning there in March, he said he was given one therapy session and placed again on a regimen of drugs.

The post's mental health clinic has 11 psychiatrists and clinical psychologists to serve nearly 17,000 soldiers and their families.

    Vet Who Was AWOL Won't Be Courtmartialed, NYT, 7.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Troubled-Soldier.html

Pentagon to Appeal Guantanamo Decisions

June 8, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:55 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Defense Department said Friday that it will appeal the decisions of two judges who earlier this week stalled the military's move to put detainees at Guantanamo Bay on trial.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the department is filing a motion with the judges to reconsider their rulings, saying that the problem is largely semantics.

Military judges ruled Monday that the Pentagon could not prosecute Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Omar Khadr because they had not first been identified as ''unlawful'' enemy combatants, as required by a law passed last year by Congress. Khadr and Hamdan previously had been identified by military panels here only as enemy combatants, lacking the critical ''unlawful'' designation.

Whitman called the issue a slight difference in terminology, that should be settled quickly. He said the motion for reconsideration would be filed Friday.

''There is no material difference between the term enemy combatant used by the combatant status review tribunal process and the term unlawful enemy combatant as utilized in the military commissions act, as it pertains to the individuals in question,'' said Whitman.

He said the department reviewed various options and opted to go back to the original two judges with a renewed legal argument.

Hamdan, of Yemen, is believed to have been chauffeur to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Khadr is a Canadian who was arrested at 15 on an Afghan battlefield, accused of killing a U.S. soldier.

The decision dealt a blow to the Bush administration in its efforts to begin prosecuting dozens of detainees regarded as the nation's most dangerous terrorist suspects.

The two detainees are the only ones currently in the roughly 380 prisoner population at Guantanamo who have been charged with crimes under a reconstituted military trial system.

One other detainee charged under the new system, Australian David Hicks, pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida and is serving a nine-month sentence in Australia.

Last year, Republicans and the White House pushed through legislation authorizing the war-crimes trials after the Supreme Court threw out President Bush's previous system as illegal and in violation of international treaties.

Bush established the specialized tribunal system shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but had not been able to convict any terrorists because of legal hurdles.

------

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil

    Pentagon to Appeal Guantanamo Decisions, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Guantanamo-Detainees.html

Charges Dismissed Against Gitmo Prisoner

June 4, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:27 p.m. ET
The New York Times

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- A military judge on Monday dismissed terrorism-related charges against a prisoner charged with killing an American soldier in Afghanistan, in a stunning reversal for the Bush administration's attempts to try Guantanamo detainees in military court.

The chief of military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay, Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, said the ruling in the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr could spell the end of the war-crimes trial system set up last year by Congress and President Bush after the Supreme Court threw out the previous system.

But Omar Khadr, who was 15 when he was captured after a deadly firefight in Afghanistan and who is now 20, will remain at the remote U.S. military base along with some 380 other men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The judge, Army Col. Peter Brownback, said he had no choice but to throw the Khadr case out because he had been classified as an ''enemy combatant'' by a military panel years earlier -- and not as an ''alien unlawful enemy combatant.''

The Military Commissions Act, signed by Bush last year, specifically says that only those classified as ''unlawful'' enemy combatants can face war trials here, Brownback noted during the arraignment in a hilltop courtroom on this U.S. military base.

Sullivan said the dismissal of Khadr case has ''huge'' impact because none of the detainees held at this isolated military base in southeast Cuba has been found to be an ''unlawful'' enemy combatant.

''It is not just a technicality -- it's the latest demonstration that this newest system just does not work,'' Sullivan told journalists. ''It is a system of justice that does not comport with American values.''

Sullivan said the judge hearing the case of the only other Guantanamo detainee currently charged with crimes is not bound by Brownback's ruling but that he expected the judge would make the same decision.

That other detainee is Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who is accused of chauffeuring Osama bin Laden and being the al-Qaida chief's bodyguard. His arraignment was scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Brownback's ruling came just minutes into Khadr's arraignment, in which he faced charges he committed murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism and spying.

''The charges are dismissed without prejudice,'' Brownback said as he adjourned the proceeding.

Khadr was captured after a firefight in 2002 in which he was wounded and allegedly killed a U.S. Army soldier with a grenade. He appeared in the courtroom with a beard and wearing an olive-green prison uniform.

Only three detainees held here have been charged under the new military tribunal system. The third, Australian David Hicks, pleaded guilty in March to providing material support to al-Qaida and is serving out a nine-month sentence in Australia.

A prosecuting attorney said he would appeal the dismissal of the case.

Under the new war-crimes trial system, the prosecution has 72 hours to appeal, but the court designated to hear the appeal -- known as the court of military commissions review -- doesn't even exist, Sullivan noted.

Even as the U.S. military hoped to rev up its prosecutions of Guantanamo detainees -- with the Pentagon saying it expects to eventually charge about 80 of the 380 prisoners held at this isolated base -- questions lingered about the legitimacy of the process.

The Supreme Court, ruling in favor of a lawsuit brought by Hamdan, last June threw out a previous military tribunal system that was set up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, calling it unconstitutional. Congress responded with new guidelines for war-crimes trials and Bush signed them into law.

Hamdan's attorney, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, told The Associated Press he will challenge the new system, insisting it also is unconstitutional.

For one, the Military Commissions Act retroactively made certain acts such as conspiracy a crime, Swift said.

''This case raises significant questions'' about the separation of powers, Swift said. ''Congress cannot violate the Constitution to fix things ... but they are backdating anything and making it a crime.''

Hamdan is charged with conspiracy -- centered on his alleged membership in al-Qaida and purported role in plotting to attack civilians and civilian targets -- and with providing material support for terrorism. As part of the second charge, Hamdan is accused of transporting at least one SA-7 surface-to-air missile to shoot down U.S. and coalition military aircraft in Afghanistan in November 2001.

Hamdan's alleged war crimes were committed between February 1996 and November 2001, according to the charge sheet. Swift, in the interview, said some acts predate the start of the Bush administration's war against terrorism, saying it generally is considered to be Sept. 11, 2001.

But Army Lt. Col. William Britt, the chief prosecutor in the Hamdan case, told the AP there is no established date when hostilities commenced and that the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center could be construed as the war's opening shot.

In an interview Sunday at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington -- as prosecutors, defense attorneys, human rights monitors and journalists waited to board a plane to Guantanamo for the arraignments -- Britt said he expects a courtroom battle over the matters Swift raised.

''These are novel issues,'' Britt said. ''We're talking about new legislation, with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. We, the government, are looking forward to litigating (them).''

The son of an alleged al-Qaida financier, Khadr is accused of killing U.S. Army Sgt. Christopher Speer with a grenade during a firefight in Afghanistan on July 27, 2002.

Khadr's attorneys had decried the charges against him, saying he was a child soldier and should be rehabilitated, not imprisoned.

''The U.S. will be the first country in modern history to try an individual who was a child at the time of the alleged war crimes,'' the attorneys said in a joint statement in April.

    Charges Dismissed Against Gitmo Prisoner, NYT, 4.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Guantanamo-Trials.html

Marine Facing Hearing in Iraqi Deaths

May 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:17 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Attorneys for the highest ranking Marine charged in a sweep that killed 24 Iraqi civilians, some of them children still in their pajamas, say he reported the facts as he understood them at the time, and that his superiors knew as much as he did.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, commander of the Marine battalion, faces a preliminary hearing Wednesday on allegations that he failed to investigate the deaths at Haditha.

Chessani, 43, had inspected the scene after the Nov. 19, 2005, killings and ''saw no law-of-war violation,'' said his attorney Brian Rooney. He said Chessani immediately reported to his boss, the commanding officer for the 2nd Marine Regiment.

''That same night, he knew exactly what Chessani knew,'' Rooney said. ''My guy is not guilty and neither are these other guys.''

Other witnesses have said they, too, saw no need to investigate how the Iraqis were killed.

During several days of testimony earlier this month for Capt. Randy W. Stone, also charged in the case, a two-star general said he knew about the deaths but saw no need to investigate because he believed they happened during a legitimate combat operation.

The 24 were killed shortly after a roadside bomb exploded, killing one Marine and injured two others. In the aftermath of the blast, a Marine squad went house to house looking for those responsible.

The Marines have said they believed they were taking fire from the houses. They used fragmentation grenades and machine guns to clear the homes, but instead of hitting insurgents, they killed civilians.

Chessani is charged with dereliction of duty and violating a lawful order for failing to investigate the deaths of the men, women and children killed by U.S. troops in Haditha. If convicted, he faces up to three years in prison. Three other officers are also charged with dereliction of duty, and three enlisted Marines are charged with murder. All belonged to the Camp Pendleton-based 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment.

Rooney said he wanted several high-ranking officers to testify at the hearing, known as an Article 32 investigation, the military equivalent of a grand jury.

One witnesses he wants to call, Maj. Gen. Stephen T. Johnson, was the commanding general of Marines in western Iraq when the killings took place. Johnson told investigators he didn't feel the slayings were significant.

''Examples of many civilians being killed at a time were precedent for that,'' Johnson told investigators. ''It happened all the time.''

Johnson is unlikely to testify; Rooney said he has asserted his Fifth Amendment privileges against self-incrimination.

Rooney works for the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., a nonprofit Christian law firm that takes on issues of faith, family values and patriotism. Rooney said Chessani, from Rangely, Colo., will be represented free of charge.

During Stone's recent hearing, Sgt. Maj. Edward Sax testified that ''Chessani is the most morally correct Marine officer I have ever served with in my 27 years I have served.''

Maj. Samuel Carrasco, however, testified that Chessani shouted, ''My men are not murderers,'' after learning of allegations that his troops targeted civilians.

Chessani ''apologized for his outburst'' and said the slayings would be reviewed, Carrasco said. ''He had an incredible amount of agitation, frustration.''

The hearing is expected to last at least a week and defense lawyers will show many hours of videotaped testimony from Marine witnesses who have now been redeployed to Iraq.

    Marine Facing Hearing in Iraqi Deaths, NYT, 30.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marines-Haditha.html

U.S. officers rejected Haditha probe request: Marine

Sat May 12, 2007
8:05PM EDT
Reuters
By Marty Graham

CAMP PENDLETON, California (Reuters) - U.S. commanders rejected a local council's request for an investigation days after Marines in Iraq killed 24 civilians in the town of Haditha in November 2005, according to testimony on Saturday at a military tribunal.

The councilors' concerns were dismissed because commanders believed the civilians died in cross-fire when troops responded to an attack by insurgents that had killed one of their own, said Maj. Dana Hyatt, who was at what he said was a 45-minute-long meeting between local officials and Marine officers.

"It wasn't the Marines who instigated this. Having (bombs) and attacks in the neighborhood was also their (the residents') responsibility, they had some responsibility," Hyatt said, in testimony at the hearing into the killings at Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base in Southern California.

Hyatt, who was in charge of condolence payments to families of the dead and acted as liaison between Marines and the community, characterized the deaths as "unfortunate."

He said he saw no need for an investigation at the time as he had been told there had been suicide bombers found with weapons among eight dead insurgents counted by Marines in Haditha.

Hyatt recalled meeting three vehicles carrying the bodies of the 24 slain civilians, including a child's body, at a local morgue in the early morning of November 20, 2005.

"I remember seeing a young child's head sticking out of one of the black garbage bags," Hyatt said. "I was trying not to stare too much."

Seven Marines have been charged in connection with the 24 deaths. Prosecutors allege the killings were revenge for the death of a popular young Marine killed by a roadside bomb.

The defendants say the killings occurred as they cleared an area after the attack as they had been ordered to do.

Three Marines have been charged with murder. Four officers not present at the killings have been charged with not investigating or obstructing the probe.

First Lt. William Kallop earlier this week testified he ordered troops into two houses to search for insurgents believed to have triggered the roadside bombs that killed Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas and wounded two other Marines.

Kallop said the Marines told him they heard rounds being chambered in one of the houses and then attacked with grenades and gunfire. The attacks on the houses left 15 civilians, including women and children, dead.

At least six witnesses have testified they never saw a reason to investigate the deaths until Time magazine submitted questions four months after the killings. Time's report on the killings prompted a Pentagon investigation.

(Reporting by Marty Graham)

    U.S. officers rejected Haditha probe request: Marine, R, 12.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1221032720070513

Haditha Hearing to Enter 5th Day

May 12, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:41 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) -- For four days, Marines have testified in court that they saw no need to investigate a squad's 2005 killings of 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha.

A Marine intelligence captain paid little heed to a flier from the Haditha town council that accused Marines of intentionally targeting civilians. A lieutenant dismissed a reporter's questions about alleged abuses, figuring they reflected bias against the Marines and President Bush.

The preliminary hearing for Capt. Randy W. Stone was to continue Saturday with testimony expected from an operations officer and a major who distributed nearly $40,000 in U.S. government compensation to survivors of the attack.

Stone is one of four officers charged with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate the killings. Three enlisted Marines are charged with unpremeditated murder in the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths in the Iraq war.

Capt. Jeffrey Dinsmore testified Friday that council members met with battalion commander Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani and company commander Capt. Lucas McConnell from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines on Nov. 27, 2005, eight days after a Marine squad killed 24 Iraqis including women and children in their homes after a deadly roadside bomb attack.

Dinsmore said the council had circulated a flier demanding an investigation into the deaths and outlining allegations that Marines deliberately targeted civilians, but he dismissed the flier as propaganda.

''The reality was then and the reality is now, you let loose Marines (in a combat environment) that are defending themselves against a hostile situation -- they do not have the training nor do they have presence of mind to differentiate between civilians and insurgents,'' Dinsmore said.

The attack occurred after a roadside bomb struck a Humvee convoy, killing one Marine and injuring two others. In the aftermath, Marines shot five Iraqis by a car and went house to house looking for insurgents, using grenades and machine guns to clear houses.

Dinsmore's testimony echoed other witnesses who testified that the deaths of women and children were considered collateral damage in legitimate combat.

When asked how many people in his battalion knew about the civilian deaths, Dinsmore said ''it was common knowledge.'' He testified that regimental commanders had a ''unique disinterest'' in investigating the killings.

The hearing is part of an Article 32 investigation, the military's equivalent to a grand jury proceeding. Maj. Thomas McCann, the investigating officer, will hear evidence and recommend whether the charges should go to trial.

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On the Net:

Marine Corps Iraq Investigations: http://www.usmc.mil/lapa/iraq-investigations.htm

    Haditha Hearing to Enter 5th Day, NYT, 12.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marines-Haditha.html

Haditha Hearing to Enter 4th Day

May 11, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:48 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) -- The biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths in the Iraq war begins its fourth day in court Friday with mounting testimony that Marines initially considered the killings of 24 Iraqis an unfortunate, but legitimate, consequence of urban combat.

Witnesses have testified at a preliminary hearing for Capt. Randy W. Stone that the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians came on a brutal day of combat on Nov. 19, 2005 in Haditha. They said they did not see any need for an investigation at the time.

Stone is one of four officers charged with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate the killings. Three enlisted Marines are charged with murder.

An intelligence officer and an operations officer were among those expected to testify Friday.

The attack occurred after a roadside bomb struck a Humvee convoy, killing one Marine and injuring two others. In the aftermath, Marines shot five Iraqis standing by a car and went house to house looking for insurgents, using grenades and machine guns to clear houses.

Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, the top general in charge of Marines in Iraq's Al Anbar province when the killings occurred, testified Thursday that he knew about the deaths the day they took place, but considered them simply a ''truly unfortunate'' consequence of war at the time.

''I had no information that a law of armed conflict violation had been committed,'' he said by video link from the Pentagon.

Huck said he initially saw no reason to investigate the killing of women and children by troops, and said he didn't learn about allegations that civilians were intentionally targeted until three months later when a Time magazine reporter raised questions.

Stone's attorney, Charles Gittins, called Huck to testify in an attempt to show Stone did nothing wrong because Marines throughout the command chain knew about the killings but agreed not to order an investigation because the deaths were deemed to have been lawful.

On Wednesday, a Marine sergeant testified that his squad leader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, shot five Iraqi men as they stood with their hands in the air and then told comrades to lie about it.

The hearing is part of an Article 32 investigation, the military's equivalent to a grand jury proceeding. Maj. Thomas McCann, the investigating officer, will hear evidence and recommend whether the charges should go to trial.

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On the Net:

Marine Corps Iraq Investigations: http://tinyurl.com/yccquj

    Haditha Hearing to Enter 4th Day, NYT, 11.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marines-Haditha.html

Marine Says His Staff Misled Him on Killings

May 11, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., May 10 — The general who led a division in charge of the marines who killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in 2005 testified Thursday that he was kept from weighing accusations that the killings were illegal because his subordinate officers withheld information for nearly three months.

The officer, Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, the Second Marine Division commander in Iraq at the time, testified in a military hearing here that he had learned that women and children had been killed within hours of the attack, on Nov. 19, 2005.

But he said he had believed that the deaths were the unfortunate but unavoidable result of combat with Sunni Arab insurgents.

General Huck said he had not learned until February 2006 about inquiries into the deaths by Time magazine because his own chief of staff and regimental commander kept him in the dark.

The chief of staff, Col. R. Gary Sokoloski, and the regimental commander, Col. Stephen W. Davis, had learned of the Time reporter’s questions in late January 2006, General Huck testified. But, he said, they and all the other officers in his chain of command failed to tell him.

“It had been alive for three weeks without my being aware of it,” General Huck said of Time’s inquiry.

General Huck testified on the third day of a hearing for one of four marine officers charged with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate properly the civilian killings. Three enlisted men are charged with their murders.

General Huck said he had first become aware of accusations that the civilians were unjustly killed when his superior, Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the day-to-day commander in Iraq at the time, sent him an e-mail message on Feb. 12 to ask what he knew about the reporter’s inquiry.

General Huck said he was “pretty irritated” with Colonel Sokoloski for not telling him earlier about the reporter’s questions. “What am I, the last guy to find out in this organization?” he said he had asked Colonel Sokoloski the morning after receiving the e-mail message.

General Huck said that until he received the message, he had never considered the killings a violation of any kind because they had occurred during a combat operation and it was not uncommon for civilians to die in such circumstances.

“In my mind’s eye, I saw insurgent fire, I saw Kilo Company fire,” General Huck testified, via video link from the Pentagon, where he is assistant deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations. “I could see how 15 neutrals in those circumstances could be killed.”

General Huck said he had made a list of all the officers and enlisted men who could have reported the Haditha killings as a possible law of war violation but did not. They ranged from senior officers to sergeants and radio operators who heard reports from the field that day.

Fielding questions from lawyers for Capt. Randy W. Stone, a battalion lawyer charged with failing to investigate the deaths, General Huck gave what seemed to be contradictory answers about whether he should have investigated the deaths, given what he knew at the time.

For instance, he said he had learned within hours of the episode that women and children had been killed, and acknowledged that his own rules required investigation when a “significant” number of civilians died in actions involving marines. But later he said he saw no reason to look into how a “big” number of civilians had died in Haditha.

General Huck pointed out that his superiors — including General Chiarelli and his predecessor, and Maj. Gen. Steve Johnson, the top Marine commander in Iraq at the time — had received many of the field reports about the Haditha civilian deaths that he had received, and that none had opened an inquiry until the Time reporter, Tim McGirk, started asking questions.

Statements from General Huck’s bosses in Iraq at the time seem to confirm his testimony.

General Johnson, for instance, told military investigators looking into how the chain of command had responded to the Haditha episode that he had been more concerned at the time about the enemy’s use of a lethal roadside bomb — known as an improvised explosive device, or I.E.D. — than about the civilians who died that day.

“In my way of thinking as the commander, at that point in our time in Iraq, 15 people killed as a result of an attack, in a built-up area that involved I.E.D.’s and a coordinated attack, I still think that probably my reaction was, ‘That’s too bad, but they got caught somehow,’ ” General Johnson told investigators in a sworn statement obtained by The New York Times from someone familiar with the case.

“Our thought process would have been that, ‘Hey, if the enemy hadn’t done it, those people wouldn’t have got killed.’ ”

But as Thursday’s other main witness testified, the reporter’s questions seemed to provoke far more disdain — for the reporter and for Haditha’s civilian leaders — than curiosity about whether the marines had done anything wrong that morning.

The day’s first witness, First Lt. Adam P. Mathes, the Company K executive officer at the time, said he and the battalion commander and the battalion executive officer had collectively dismissed Mr. McGirk’s questions because they had considered them “sensational” and politically motivated.

“The questions were questionable,” Lieutenant Mathes said, testifying by video link from Kuwait, where he is stationed. “It sounded like bad, negative spin. We tried to weed out the grievances that Mr. McGirk had against the Bush administration.”

He said Mr. McGirk had seemed to have an antiwar agenda. “This guy is looking for blood,” Lieutenant Mathis testified, “because blood leads headlines.”

    Marine Says His Staff Misled Him on Killings, NYT, 11.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/world/middleeast/11haditha.html?hp

Pentagon charges Hamdan

Thu May 10, 2007
8:33PM EDT
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon on Thursday charged Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the Guantanamo prisoner whose lawsuit derailed the Bush administration's original terror trial plan, with conspiracy and material support for terrorism.

The Defense Department said Hamdan served as Osama bin Laden's bodyguard and driver and that he transported and delivered weapons and other supplies to al Qaeda members and associates.

The Pentagon, in charging documents, also accused Hamdan of receiving weapons training in Afghanistan.

Under the original military tribunal system, which the White House was forced to overhaul following Hamdan's legal challenge and landmark Supreme Court ruling, Hamdan faced a single charge of conspiracy.

Hamdan denies being a member of al Qaeda, and the Supreme Court said in its ruling that the allegations against him -- driving bin Laden, delivering ammunition and acting as a bodyguard -- were not war crimes, his military lawyer said.

"The government has chosen right off the bat to thumb its nose at the Supreme Court," said the lawyer, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift.

Swift also argued the charges were not legitimate under the new military trial system Congress authorized last year because the law cannot be applied retroactively.

"Mr. Hamdan was not the mastermind of al Qaeda. He was the driver," Swift said.

Hamdan's military commission will be formed within 120 days. His arraignment at Guantanamo has been scheduled for June 4, according to a defense official.

    Pentagon charges Hamdan, R, 10.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1015725920070511

Marine Commander Testifies About Haditha

May 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:21 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) -- A platoon commander who ordered several Iraqi houses cleared after a roadside bomb blast in Haditha kill a Marine defended the move as a legitimate combat operation, but he testified that he was shocked to learn 24 civilians were killed.

''There's a difference between killing and murder,'' Marine 1st Lt. William Kallop told a military hearing Tuesday. ''At the time, I think they had a good understanding of the rules of engagement.''

Kallop, who was granted immunity for his testimony, spoke at a preliminary hearing at Camp Pendleton for Capt. Randy W. Stone, a Marine lawyer from Dunkirk, Md. Stone is accused along with three officers of dereliction of duty for failing to investigate the deaths.

The hearing, continuing Wednesday, is part of an Article 32 investigation, the military's equivalent to a grand jury proceeding. Maj. Thomas McCann, the investigating officer, will hear evidence and recommend whether the charges should go to trial in the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths in the Iraq war.

Kallop was the first officer at the scene of the roadside bomb blast that killed one Marine and injured two others on Nov. 19, 2005.

He was called to the stand by Stone's civilian attorney, Charles Gittins, who hoped the commander's testimony would show that Stone, 34, did nothing wrong because he thought the killings were a legitimate outcome of combat. Gittins noted that Stone reported the incident up the chain of command and said he had been told not to investigate further.

Recalling the aftermath of the killings, Kallop said he went to inspect one of several cleared houses. Instead of finding dead insurgents, he found body parts, an injured boy and a dead Iraqi man.

''The only thing I thought, sir, was what the crap?'' Kallop said. ''Where are the bad guys? Why aren't any insurgents here?''

Kallop said a Marine who had helped clear the house looked ''just as shocked.''

Three enlisted Marines are charged with unpremeditated murder in the case. They deny any wrongdoing, saying they responded properly to a perceived threat.

Under questioning from prosecutor Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan, Kallop said Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, a squad leader, reported to him after the houses were cleared but did not mention that many civilians were killed.

After Kallop saw the bodies himself, he did not question Wuterich about the deaths.

''You didn't even have one question that maybe the rules of engagement, it wasn't applied?'' asked Sullivan.

''No, sir,'' Kallop replied.

Wuterich is charged with unpremeditated murder in 18 of the Iraqi deaths. Prosecutors have given several other Marines immunity in return for their testimony.

Gittins said he expects to call 25 witnesses, including a two-star general, over the next few days.

------

On the Net:

Marine Corps Iraq Investigations: http://www.usmc.mil/lapa/iraq-investigations.htm

    Marine Commander Testifies About Haditha, NYT, 9.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Marines-Haditha.html

Marine says found live children among Haditha dead

Wed May 9, 2007
4:27AM EDT
Reuters
By Marty Graham

CAMP PENDLETON, California (Reuters) - A U.S. Marine who walked through two houses in Haditha, Iraqi minutes after other Marines killed occupants with grenades and guns found two wounded children pretending to be dead next to a deceased woman.

"I saw one breathe. That's how I knew," 1st Lt. William Kallop testified on Tuesday at a military tribunal at Camp Pendleton. "The little boy who breathed was about 6 or 7 and when I touched him, the little girl jumped up. She was about 11."

The two injured children were the only survivors of a Marine Corps assault on two Iraqi homes near the site of a bomb attack on a Marine convoy that left one Marine dead and two injured. Prosecutors contend that the surviving Marines swept through the town on a revenge spree, killing 24 civilians with grenades and guns.

Defense lawyers for the seven Marines charged in the November 19, 2005, killings say the Marines were following procedure and orders.

Kallop, who led the first rescue team to come to the aid of the Marines struck by the bomb, testified he told Sgt. Frank Wuterich to clear two houses near the bomb site because the Marines suspected the bomb had been triggered from the houses and that insurgents were hiding within.

Later, Kallop, who has immunity from prosecution, said he did not question the Marines' reports nor wonder if their actions had been proper.

"At the time I thought my Marines had a good understanding of the rules of engagement and when they gave me a back brief, I said 'Roger that, good to go,'" Kallop said.

PRAISED BY THE PRESIDENT

Kallop testified on Tuesday at the hearing for Capt. Randy Stone, one of four officers -- a lieutenant colonel, two captains and a lieutenant -- not present at the killings who were charged with failing to report and investigate the killings. Three other Marines are charged with murder.

Sgt. Frank Wuterich, one of three Marines facing murder charges, went into the houses on his orders, Kallop said.

"I pointed to a group of buildings and said 'Flush them out, try to find the trigger man,'" Kallop testified, speaking in a matter-of-fact tone.

Minutes later, after Wuterich's squad finished, Kallop walked through the two houses, where the majority of the 24 victims died, either from grenades or gunfire.

"I thought 'Hey, what the crap, why aren't there any bad guys, any insurgents here?'" Kallop said. "I thought that was within the rules of engagement because the squad leader was about to kick in a door and walk into a machine gun nest."

A few months before the 2005 incident, Bush singled out Stone in a speech marking the 60th anniversary of VJ Day. "He's guided by the same convictions (the World War Two generation) carried into battle. He shares the same willingness to serve a cause greater than himself," Bush said of Stone.

Stone, 34, could face a maximum penalty of two years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. Tuesday's proceeding was an Article 32 hearing in which a military court reviews whether there is enough evidence to bring the matter to trial.

    Marine says found live children among Haditha dead, R, 9.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0740387820070509

U.S. Officer Accused of ‘Aiding Enemy’ in Iraq

April 27, 2007
The New York Times
By DAMIEN CAVE

BAGHDAD, April 26 — The American military has charged a top commander at its main detention center here with nine violations of military law, including “aiding the enemy,” a rare and serious accusation that could carry a death sentence.

According to a military statement released Thursday, the officer, Lt. Col. William H. Steele, provided aid to the enemy between Oct. 1, 2005, and Oct. 31, 2006, “by providing an unmonitored cellular phone to detainees” at Camp Cropper, an expansive prison near Baghdad International Airport that held Saddam Hussein before he was hanged.

Colonel Steele, who oversaw one of several compounds at Camp Cropper as commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment, was also charged with several counts of illegally storing and marking classified information; failure to obey an order; possession of pornographic videos; dereliction of duty regarding government funds; and conduct unbecoming of an officer — for fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee since 2005, and for maintaining “an inappropriate relationship” with an interpreter in 2005 and 2006.

There were no further details given to explain the circumstances of the accusations.

Military officials said that Colonel Steele was detained last month and was now in Kuwait awaiting a military hearing to determine whether the case would proceed. They emphasized that he should be presumed innocent.

“Is there enough evidence or information that this needs to go to a court-martial?” said Lt. Col. Josslyn L. Aberle, a military spokeswoman. “That’s where we’re at right now.”

Walter Huffman, a former Army judge advocate general and now the dean of the Texas Tech University law school, said that a death sentence was unlikely, because to convict Colonel Steele of the most severe form of aiding the enemy, prosecutors would have to show that he intentionally endangered American troops or missions. In this particular case, he added, that would mean proving that he knew the cellphone was being used to make calls that would put Americans at risk. “That is a difficult charge to prove,” he said.

Mr. Huffman, who emphasized that he had not seen the specific charges or details of Colonel Steele’s case, said the fraternization charge sounded as if it was not code for sex but rather a reference to the simple impropriety of regular contact with a detainee’s relative. That would take on added seriousness in a Muslim country, where speaking to young women outside of one’s family is considered highly inappropriate.

He added that Colonel Steele’s rank and supervisory role at Camp Cropper magnified the seriousness of the allegations. “He’s the person in charge of enforcing the rules at the prison,” Mr. Huffman said. “It makes it an even more egregious offense because of the context.”

Regardless of the outcome, the case amounts to another public relations bruise for the American detention system. Camp Cropper was meant to signify reform. It was expanded in recent years as a replacement for Abu Ghraib, where American jailers photographed themselves humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners, and it now holds about 3,000 people.

But it has had its share of problems. Several detainees there have died mysteriously in the past year, with the most recent death occurring April 4. The causes of death for these detainees are rarely divulged.

The arrests and treatment of detainees at Camp Cropper is also the subject of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by an American security contractor who said he was unjustly held and mistreated at the prison after acting as an informant for the F.B.I. in cases involving corruption within the contracting company he worked for. A second plaintiff with a similar claim added his name to the complaint in February.

Colonel Steele appears to be only the second American officer accused of collaborating with the enemy since the war in Iraq started four years ago.

In September 2003, Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim chaplain at the Guantánamo detention center in Cuba, was accused of mutiny, sedition, aiding the enemy, adultery and possession of pornography. The military dropped all the criminal charges the following March, citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of evidence against him. A month later, Captain Yee’s record was wiped clean when an Army general dismissed his convictions for adultery and pornography.

In Washington on Thursday, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, told reporters that the violence of the war showed no signs of abating.

North of Baghdad, two Iraqi women and two children were believed to have been killed in an American airstrike that killed four insurgents, according to a military statement.

Soldiers were searching for car-bomb factories near Taji when they came under small-arms fire, the statement said. The soldiers called in an airstrike and later discovered all eight bodies at the destroyed building.

Citing the weapons in the building, a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, blamed Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia for the women’s and children’s deaths.

The police said a suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle south of Khalis, in Diyala Province, on Thursday, killing six Iraqi policemen. The police said that four bodies showing signs of torture were also found nearby in a grove of palm trees.

In Baghdad, 26 bodies were found, a higher daily toll than in the first few weeks of the two-month-old security push, and roadside bombs, mortar attacks and car bombs across the capital killed at least 11 people and wounded scores more, according to an Interior Ministry official.

In northern Iraq, two suicide bombers detonated their explosives at an office of the Kurdistan Democratic Party near Mosul, killing three people and wounding 13, according to the mayor of Tal Afar, a city about 30 miles to the south.

The police also said gunmen in Tikrit had stormed the home of Hashim al-Majeed, a cousin of Saddam Hussein, and shot and killed his wife and daughter. Mr. Majeed, who disappeared soon after Mr. Hussein’s ouster in 2003, was not at home.

Reporting was contributed by Abdul Razzaq al-Saiedi, Qais Mizher and Iraqi employees of The New York Times in Baghdad, and by Paul von Zielbauer and Michael Moss in New York.

    U.S. Officer Accused of ‘Aiding Enemy’ in Iraq, NYT, 27.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/world/middleeast/27iraq.html?hp

Military grants immunity to 7 Marines in Haditha killings

20.4.2007
AP
USA Today

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Military prosecutors have granted immunity to at least seven Marines connected to an attack that killed 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, the deadliest criminal case against U.S. troops in the Iraq war.

Orders granting the immunity ensure any testimony the Marines volunteer cannot be used against them, making it highly unlikely charges will be brought against the men. They also suggest their eyewitness accounts will feature prominently in military court hearings for seven other Marines charged in the case.

The orders were obtained by The Associated Press from someone involved in the case who declined to be identified because the documents are not public.

Among those provided with immunity to testify are an officer who told troops to raid a house and a sergeant who took photographs of the dead but later deleted them from his camera.

One of the servicemen, Lance Cpl. Humberto Manuel Mendoza, was a member of the squad that cleared several homes and killed the Iraqis in the aftermath of a Nov. 19, 2005 roadside bomb attack that killed one Marine.

Mendoza, who was not charged in the case, told investigators that he shot at least two men, but did so because they were in houses declared hostile.

"I was following my training that all individuals in a hostile house are to be shot," Mendoza told investigators. He was given immunity Dec. 18, just days before the Marine Corps announced murder charges against four enlisted men and dereliction of duty charges against four officers.

The Marine Corps said Tuesday that it dropped all charges against one of the eight men, Sgt. Sanick P. Dela Cruz of Chicago. Dela Cruz also has been given immunity to testify.

1st Lt. William Kallop, the first officer to arrive at the scene of the explosion, was granted immunity to talk to prosecutors April 3 as part of an order to "cooperate and truthfully answer all questions posed by investigators." He has not been charged in the case.

Kallop was with a rapid-response force that arrived minutes after the bomb went off. According to investigative documents, he said squad leader Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich and Cpl. Hector Salinas heard gunfire coming from a nearby house. Kallop told investigators that he ordered the men to "take the house."

In the ensuing raids on several homes, 24 Iraqis died, including women and children. Wuterich is charged with 13 counts of unpremeditated murder; Salinas has not been charged.

Kallop's attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Two other officers and several enlisted men were also given immunity to testify.

A legal expert said by giving so many people immunity, prosecutors are taking a "conservative" approach to the case, which is the biggest to have emerged against U.S. troops since the start of the war in Iraq.

"These are legitimate moves by the prosecutor, who is very cautious," said Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps prosecutor and judge who teaches law of war at Georgetown University Law Center.

Marine spokesman Lt. Col. Sean Gibson said he could not discuss the ongoing investigation.

Preliminary hearings for the seven Marines still facing charges are expected in the coming weeks at Camp Pendleton.

Aside from Wuterich, the others facing unpremeditated murder charges are Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, 22, of Canonsburg, Pa. and Lance Cpl. Stephen B. Tatum, 25, of Edmond, Okla.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, 42, of Rangely, Colo., 1st Lt. Andrew A. Grayson, 25, Capt. Lucas McConnell, 31, of Napa, Calif., and Capt. Randy W. Stone, 34, face charges in connection with how the incident was investigated or reported.

    Military grants immunity to 7 Marines in Haditha killings, UT, 20.4.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-04-20-marines-immunity-haditha_N.htm

Army Medic Serves Sentence for Desertion

April 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:16 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BERLIN (AP) -- A U.S. Army medic who refused to return for a second tour to Iraq was released from a military prison in Germany on Wednesday after serving a sentence for desertion, the U.S. military said.

Specialist Agustin Aguayo, 35, was convicted at a court martial in March of desertion and other lesser charges and sentenced to eight months in prison, well short of the possible maximum of seven years, in a case that has become a cause for peace activists.

With credit for time already served, he spent less than six weeks behind bars before being released, said U.S. European Command spokeswoman Lt. Col. Elizabeth Hibner.

Elsa Rassbach, whose anti-war group American Voices Abroad has assisted Aguayo, said his release was bittersweet.

''Even though he's free, the decision against him was unjust in our opinion, because he is a legitimate conscientious objector,,'' she said.

Neither Aguayo nor his Frankfurt-based attorney could immediately be reached for comment.

Aguayo was born in Mexico and holds dual Mexican and U.S. citizenship. The father of two said he joined the Army in 2002 to earn money for his education and never exected to to serve in a battle zone.

Aguayo, who was with the 1st Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, served a year as a combat medic in Iraq after the military turned down his conscientious objector request. A U.S. federal court also rejected the claim.

Faced with the prospect of redeploying to Iraq, Aguayo fled his base in Germany. He later turned himself in.

In court, Aguayo said his convictions led him avoid returning to Iraq.

''I respect everyone's views and your decision, I understand that people don't understand me,'' he told the judge. ''I tried my best, but I couldn't bear weapons and I could never point weapons at someone.''

In addition to the prison sentence, the judge ordered that Aguayo be reduced in rank to private, forfeit his pay, and receive a bad conduct discharge.

    Army Medic Serves Sentence for Desertion, NYT, 19.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iraq-US-Desertion.html

Australian Gitmo detainee gets 9 months

30.3.2007
AP
USA Today

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — A U.S. military judge accepted an Australian's guilty plea to supporting terrorism in a deal that will send the Guantanamo detainee to jail at home for less than a year, but requires silence about any alleged abuse while in custody.

David Hicks, whose charge carried a maximum penalty of life in prison, had his sentence capped at nine months on Friday by part of the plea agreement that was kept secret from a panel of military officers who recommended a longer sentence.

In the first conviction at a U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II, the 31-year-old kangaroo skinner and confessed Taliban-allied gunman told Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann that he agreed to plead guilty because prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him.

Speaking in a deep voice, Hicks said he faced damning evidence taken from "notes by interrogators" that he had been shown.

The former outback cowboy, who acknowledged aiding al-Qaeda during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, showed little emotion as he confirmed to the judge that he conducted surveillance on the former U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

The panel of officers flown to Guantanamo for sentencing Hicks deliberated for two hours before approving a sentence of seven years — what they had been told was the maximum allowed under the plea deal. After they left the courtroom, Kohlmann revealed all but nine months would be suspended.

Asked if the outcome was what he was told to expect, Hicks said, "Yes, it was."

The plea deal will send Hicks to a prison in Australia within 60 days. His sentence begins immediately, but commanders of the U.S. military prison where he has been held for five years say there will be no change in his detention conditions before his departure.

"I don't think David's going to be able to show any real emotion until he gets off the plane in Australia," said his lawyer, Marine Corps Maj. Michael Mori. "I don't think until he leaves here will it be a reality, and that's why I hope it's as soon as possible."

Hicks expressed regret for his actions in a statement read by Mori, who described his client as an immature adventurer who had tried to enlist in the Australian army but was rejected for lack of education.

"He apologizes to his family, he apologizes to Australia and he apologizes to the United States," Mori said.

The lead prosecutor, Marine Lt. Col. Kevin Chenail, said Hicks deserved the maximum punishment for betraying the freedoms he was raised with in Australia. He argued al-Qaeda gave him advanced training because his Western features made him a valuable operative.

"Today in this courtroom we are on the front line of the war on terrorism, face to face with the enemy," said Chenail, who referred to Hicks by his alias "Muhammad Dawood."

"Muhammad Dawood will always be a threat unless he changes his beliefs and his ideology," he said.

Under his plea deal, Hicks stipulated that he has "never been illegally treated by a person or persons while in the custody of the U.S. government," Kohlmann said. In the statement read by Mori, Hicks thanked U.S. service members for their professionalism during his imprisonment.

Furthermore, the judge said, the agreement bars Hicks from suing the U.S. government for alleged abuse, forfeits any right to appeal his conviction and imposes a gag order that prevents him speaking with news media for a year from his sentencing date.

Hicks previously reported being beaten and deprived of sleep at the prison erected for terrorism suspects held at this U.S. Navy base.

Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union suggest the government aimed to prevent the release of damaging allegations.

"If Mr. Hicks' treatment was not illegal, he should be allowed to describe it so the world can judge for itself," he said.

U.S. officials have been accused by human rights groups of permitting torture of detainees in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

Hicks, who was captured in Afghanistan in December 2001, entered a guilty plea Monday night but he was not formally convicted until Kohlmann accepted his plea at Friday's session.

Australia's conservative prime minister, John Howard, who supports the U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, has faced growing pressure for Hicks, one of the first detainees to arrive at the camp in January 2002, to be returned home ahead of elections later this year.

Defense attorneys secured the plea agreement through negotiations with "convening authority" Susan Crawford, the official appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to oversee the tribunals, according to the chief prosecutor Air Force Col. Morris Davis.

Mori, Hicks' defense attorney, declined to comment on any role the Australian government played in the discussions.

Critics said the pace of developments for Hicks, the first detainee to face prosecution under new tribunals at Guantanamo, suggested he was benefiting from political pressure.

"Mr. Hicks' military commission was like a train hurtling toward judgment," said Hina Shamsi of Human Rights First. "It was propelled by political considerations of a U.S. ally and nothing was allowed to stand in its way."

Davis, whose office plans to prosecute about 75 Guantanamo detainees, said politics did not influence their treatment of Hicks' case and that he was satisfied with the fairness of the first completed commission. But he said he hoped Hicks' short sentence would not set a precedent.

"I think David Hicks is very fortunate he's getting a second chance," he told reporters. "I think that he's learned a lesson from this and he'll make the most of that second chance."

At the hearing, Hicks wore a gray suit with a maroon tie, his hair newly shorn. He previously wore a tan prison uniform and his hair hung below his shoulders. His lawyers said he had kept his hair long to help block out the round-the-clock lighting in his cell.

Hicks had also been charged with supporting terrorist acts. That count was dismissed as part of the agreement.

Under the deal, he will also be required to cooperate with U.S. and Australian authorities to share his knowledge of al-Qaeda and a militant Pakistani group, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, which helped him travel to Afghanistan to attend terrorist training camps.

"Any failure to cooperate with U.S. or Australian law enforcement may delay your release from confinement," Kohlmann warned.

Another condition calls for Hicks to hand over to the Australian government any proceeds from selling the rights to his life story.

In the days before his arraignment Monday, Hicks' lawyers said their client was severely depressed and eager to leave Guantanamo. He spent the last few months alone in a small, solid-walled cell. His father, Terry Hicks, suggested he pleaded guilty only to escape the isolated prison.

Hicks is the only detainee who has been formally charged under a new military tribunal system. Prosecutors say they plan to charge as many as 80 of the 385 men now held at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

The U.S. Supreme Court, which in June struck down the previous military tribunal system at Guantanamo as unconstitutional, is considering a challenge to the revised tribunals. Some members of Congress have vowed to repeal the law that eliminates detainees' access to U.S. courts.

    Australian Gitmo detainee gets 9 months, UT, 30.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-03-30-guantanamo-hicks_N.htm

Australian marks first Guantanamo conviction

30.3.2007
AP
USA Today

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — An Australian detainee held for five years at Guantanamo Bay was found guilty Friday of providing material support for terrorism, marking the first conviction at a U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II.

David Hicks, a 31-year-old Muslim convert, faces a prison sentence of up to seven years under a plea agreement revealed Friday that also requires Hicks to drop any claims of mistreatment by the U.S. government since he was captured in Afghanistan and taken to Guantanamo Bay, said the judge, Marine Corps Col. Ralph Kohlmann.

The plea agreement also calls for an unknown portion of the sentence to be suspended.

Hicks had pleaded guilty to the charge Monday night but was not convicted until Kohlmann accepted his plea during Friday's session.

The agreement calls for Hicks to be returned to Australia within 60 days of his sentencing, which is expected within days. The U.S. government had previously agreed to let him serve any sentence in Australia.

Hicks, 31, was dressed for the hearing in a gray suit with a dark tie and with his hair newly cut short. The former outback cowboy and kangaroo skinner who aided al-Qaeda during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan showed little emotion as he confirmed to the judge that he conducted surveillance on the former American Embassy in Kabul.

Hicks could have been sentenced to life in prison. He had been also charged with supporting terrorist acts but that count was dismissed as part of the agreement.

Hicks, who had complained of abuse in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo, agrees as part of the deal that he has "never been illegally treated by a person or persons while in the custody of the U.S. government," Kohlmann said.

He will also be required to cooperate with U.S. and Australian law enforcement authorities or risk having his sentence in Australia extended.

Another condition of the plea agreement calls for him to hand over to the Australian government any proceeds from telling the story of his activities in Afghanistan and his capture.

    Australian marks first Guantanamo conviction, UT, 30.3.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-03-30-gitmo-hicks_N.htm

News Analysis

New Justice System Is a Work in Progress

March 29, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

In the last few weeks, the two most famous prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay naval base responded to proceedings against them by admitting their guilt.

That might appear to be a vindication of the Bush administration’s strategy of creating a built-from-the-ground-up military justice system limited to people said to be terrorists.

But because of the unusual circumstances of the two admissions, it is not clear yet that either one is truly representative of the system the administration has established, legal experts said. Neither the guilty plea David Hicks entered on Monday, admitting to providing material support to a terrorist organization, nor the wide-ranging confession from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, contained in a Pentagon transcript of a closed hearing on March 11, had about it the solemn finality of a conviction in a civilian criminal court, and in some ways, they were aberrations.

To hear critics of the administration describe them, the conclusions of the two proceedings were tainted by past abuse and a justice system not worthy of the name.

“The proceedings themselves just demonstrate the absence of fixed rules,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law who represents other prisoners at Guantánamo. “This is justice on the fly.”

The administration’s defenders say the recent developments are more than satisfactory and demonstrate that the administration may have struck the right balance between gathering intelligence in wartime and providing prisoners with the full array of due-process protections.

“We are finally beginning to see,” said John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the principal architects of the administration’s legal strategy after the Sept. 11 attacks, “whether the military commissions can balance a fair trial with protecting national security in a way that the civilian courts cannot. One of the purposes of the military commissions was to provide a forum where the government and Al Qaeda terrorists could reach plea bargains that would allow our intelligence agencies to win their cooperation.”

Guilty pleas are common in ordinary criminal cases, too, of course. But in a garden-variety criminal prosecution, the parties bargain, in the famous phrase, in the shadow of the law.

In the usual case, defendants make a rational calculation based on the strength of the evidence against them, the state of the law and, most important, outcomes in earlier cases. If defendants think a plea will result in a shorter sentence than the likely one at trial, discounted by the possibility of acquittal, they plead guilty.

None of that holds at Guantánamo. The incentives and calculations are quite different there.

Mr. Hicks, for instance, was bargaining in the shadow of many things — the conditions at the base, international diplomacy, homesickness and the possibility of indefinite detention without charge. But he was not, for the most part, bargaining in the shadow of the law.

The statute under which he was to be tried was brand new and untested. The relevant regulations are as yet largely unwritten. There is no body of similar trials to set the parameters for settlement discussions.

“The proceedings that led to Hicks’s plea,” Mr. Hafetz said, “underscore that the military commissions are a makeshift system that lacks legitimacy.”

In the hours before Mr. Hicks’s plea, the military judge hearing the case, Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann of the Marines, disqualified two defense lawyers, one for refusing to agree to abide by regulations that have yet to be written.

Mr. Hicks’s plea appears to be based on his calculation that he will be allowed to serve out his sentence in his home country, Australia. He may even be able to challenge his conviction there, in conventional courts.

The alternative to a transfer to Australia was a trial some months from now with an unpredictable outcome, the possibility of having to serve any sentence at Guantánamo and the risk of continued detention as an enemy combatant even once that sentence was completed.

While Mr. Mohammed’s calculations seemed very different from Mr. Hicks’s, they were just as unusual.

Mr. Mohammed, said to be the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, did not appear before a military commission like the one that heard from Mr. Hicks. The function of a military commission is the one associated with most criminal courts: it hears cases against defendants charged with violating the law and decides whether they are guilty. Military commissions are largely open to the public, and reporters and human rights groups saw Mr. Hicks plead guilty.

Mr. Mohammed, on the other hand, appeared before a combatant status review tribunal. The session at which he apparently issued his comprehensive confession was brief, closed to the public and took place before officers whose names were not disclosed.

Detainees appearing before the status tribunals are not represented by lawyers. And the tribunals’ purpose is different from that of a military commission. All they are meant to do is determine if the prisoner before it has been properly designated as an enemy combatant.

Mr. Mohammed used the opportunity for grandstanding and propaganda, comparing himself to George Washington and pleading on behalf of those he said were falsely imprisoned.

He also seemed to allude to having been tortured while in C.I.A. custody, though the transcript was redacted after the topic was introduced. Human rights groups said such abuse could taint and undermine everything Mr. Mohammed said.

The Hicks case is unrepresentative in another way, legal experts said. The vast majority of the 385 men held at Guantánamo have not been charged with any crimes, and the Pentagon may never charge them. The only tribunal they may ever see is the one that heard Mr. Mohammed.

    New Justice System Is a Work in Progress, NYT, 29.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/washington/29gitmo.html?hp

Plea of Guilty From Detainee in Guantánamo

March 27, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, March 26 — In the first conviction of a Guantánamo detainee before a military commission, an Australian who was trained by Al Qaeda pleaded guilty here Monday to providing material support to a terrorist organization.

The guilty plea by the detainee, David Hicks, was the first under a new military commission law passed by Congress in the fall after the Supreme Court struck down the Bush administration’s first system for trying inmates at Guantánamo.

The guilty plea is sure to be seen by administration supporters as an affirmation of its efforts to detain and try terrorism suspects here, although the government’s detention policies still face significant legal and political challenges.

The plea by Mr. Hicks came after an extraordinary day in a pristine red, white and blue courtroom here. Earlier the military judge had surprised the courtroom with unexpected rulings that two of Mr. Hicks’s three lawyers would not be permitted to participate in the proceedings, leaving only Maj. Michael D. Mori of the Marine Corps at the defense table.

After several acrimonious sessions in which Major Mori claimed that the judge, Colonel Ralph H. Kohlmann of the Marines, was biased, the judge insisted that he was impartial and the hearings came to a close.

But in the evening Judge Kohlmann called the court back into session, saying he had been approached by lawyers who said Mr. Hicks was now prepared to enter a plea.

Mr. Hicks, a stocky 31-year-old former kangaroo skinner who has been held at the prison for five years, was accompanied by guards to a defense table, and Major Mori said he was now prepared to plead guilty to one of two specifications in the charges against him.

That charge described Mr. Hicks’s stay in a Qaeda training camp where, it said, he learned kidnapping techniques and was trained in how to fight in an urban environment. Prosecutors have said that Mr. Hicks, who was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001, had never shot at Americans there but that he had taken part in other activities, including collecting intelligence on the American embassy there.

Australia officials, who have described Mr. Hicks as a “lost soul” and “soldier wannabe,” had been pressing the United States to resolve the case, and a prosecutor said Mr. Hicks would probably be back there within a year. Major Mori had waged an unusual campaign to rally support for Mr. Hicks in Australia.

During the plea, Judge Kohlmann led Mr. Hicks through a brief session in which he asked whether the earlier dispute about whether his lawyers were authorized to participate in the proceedings had influenced his decision to plead guilty.

“No, sir,” Mr. Hicks, dressed in a tan prison uniform, answered calmly several times.

The road to Mr. Hicks’s guilty plea was long and fraught with legal and diplomatic strife.

The Pentagon had originally hoped to begin trying detainees in the spring of 2002, but the Bush administration’s system for military tribunals has been the subject of lengthy legal challenges. The Supreme Court struck down the administration’s first plan for tribunals last June, ruling that a principal flaw was that the president had established them without Congressional authorization.

In October, Congress enacted a new law providing for military tribunals, but lawyers for detainees and other critics have challenged it as establishing a trial system that does not afford defendants the same protections as civilian courts. Critics note, for example, that the rules allow for the use of evidence obtained by coercion.

In addition to the legal challenges, the policy of holding “enemy combatants” without charges for as long as five years has drawn international protest, including from allies of the United States.

The Hicks case has drawn particular criticism in Australia, where Mr. Hicks, a high school dropout, turned to Islam after unsuccessfully trying to join the army and then joining an evangelical church.

On Monday, after Mr. Hicks’s guilty plea, the judge adjourned the case for further proceedings this week, evidently so that the lawyers could settle on what specific acts he may acknowledge. The sentence will be decided by a five-member military commission.

Lawyers have suggested that he might serve out the remainder of any sentence in Australia. Asked whether Mr. Hicks might be back in Australia by the end of the year, a military prosecutor said, “The odds are pretty good.”

Mr. Hicks’s arraignment Monday was the first public proceeding under the new tribunal rules. The hearing quickly turned fractious, especially after the judge disqualified the two lawyers.

Mr. Hicks appeared startled as his long-awaited day before the tribunal turned into something a free-for-all, rather than the orderly arraignment that had been anticipated.

“I am shocked because I just lost another lawyer,” Mr. Hicks said, after the judge said that one of his two civilian defense lawyers, Joshua L. Dratel, had not complied with the judge’s rules for handling a military commission case. Mr. Dratel, a well-known lawyer in Manhattan, has been a central player in the Hicks case.

“Right now you do not represent Mr. Hicks,” said Judge Kohlmann, the presiding judge of the new military commission organization, who assigned himself to the Hicks case.

Referring to the Bush administration’s previous plan for military commission trials struck down by the Supreme Court, Mr. Dratel said in the courtroom before he left that Monday’s events showed that the new commission process was as problem-plagued as the old one.

“You cannot predict from one day to the next what the rules are,” Mr. Dratel said.

The judge rejected each assertion that he was acting arbitrarily or was biased. In an even tone, but with a flushed face that suggested irritation, he methodically moved through the day’s events, turning aside each defense complaint. The defense claims, he said “do not raise matters that would cause a reasonable person to question my impartiality.”

Even before Monday’s hearing, the case against Mr. Hicks had been marked by an unusual public dispute between Mr. Hicks’s military lawyer, who has openly attacked the tribunals, and the military prosecutor.

And Monday, Major Mori was also critical of the judge, saying that some of his rulings seemed aimed at helping the government prove its case against Mr. Hicks. Major Mori said some rulings appeared to be “fixing the rules to fix their mistakes.”

Judge Kohlmann said his rulings had been impartial, aimed only at assuring that the case moved ahead professionally and quickly.

New Detainee at Prison Camp

WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) — American authorities have transferred a man suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks in East Africa to the military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, the Pentagon said Monday.

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said the man, Abdul Malik, had admitted involvement in a 2002 attack on a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, that killed more than a dozen people, and in the attempted downing of an Israeli airliner near Mombasa.

“He came into U.S. custody this year,” Mr. Whitman said. “He was picked up in East Africa.”

Mr. Whitman would not provide the nationality of the suspect.

    Plea of Guilty From Detainee in Guantánamo, NYT, 27.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/27/washington/27gitmo.html?hp

Detainee’s Lawyers Seek Removal of Prosecutor

March 26, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM GLABERSON

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, March 25 — As American officials prepare for the reopening on Monday of the military commissions that will try some of the detainees here, a dispute over the proper role of military defense lawyers in the planned war crimes trials is intensifying.

Defense lawyers for the Australian detainee David Hicks have filed a motion to disqualify the chief prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis. In the proceeding Monday, Mr. Hicks, 31, is to be the first of the Guantánamo detainees to be formally arraigned under a Military Commissions Act passed by Congress last year.

The defense lawyers claimed in a motion that Colonel Davis violated rules of professional conduct with a blistering attack this month on Mr. Hicks’s military defense lawyer, Maj. Michael Mori of the United States Marine Corps. They asked that Colonel Davis, an Air Force lawyer who supervises the Guantánamo prosecutors, be removed from any role in the Hicks case.

This month, Colonel Davis suggested that Mr. Hicks’s military lawyer, Major Mori, might have violated the law with public criticism of the military commissions that has included calling them kangaroo courts.

Colonel Davis was combative on Sunday, saying, “I did nothing wrong,” and saying that he was simply trying to define the boundaries of appropriate conduct for military lawyers in the commissions process.

Defense lawyers and American lawyers who have been following the dispute say the public battle over the role of military lawyers could shape how aggressive other military defense lawyers will be as the commissions’ proceedings accelerate.

An Australian lawyer who is part of the defense team, David H. B. McLeod, declined to discuss in detail the misconduct accusations. “The public will make up its own mind about Colonel Davis,” he said.

But Colonel Davis suggested that his public criticism of Major Mori was part of a more combative public stance by the Guantánamo prosecutors. “They’ve done a very effective job of telling their story, and we’ve done a very poor job of telling ours” in the past, Colonel Davis said.

Major Mori has suggested that Colonel Davis was trying to intimidate him after seven visits to Australia that helped spur support for the Hicks case, which has become a cause in Australia and an irritant in American-Australian relations.

The prosecutors here also confirmed reports Sunday that in January they had discussed the possibility of a guilty plea by Mr. Hicks, presumably in exchange for an agreement that Mr. Hicks would be able to serve his time in Australia or be freed after serving more than five years as a detainee here.

Against the backdrop of growing pressure from Australia to get Mr. Hicks’s case moving, his arraignment is to be the first under the military commissions law passed after the Supreme Court struck down the Bush administration’s plan for trying Guantánamo detainees last June.

Because of delays from litigation over the commissions and the complexities in setting up the commission process there is some urgency in the administration to show that the commissions process can work. “The administration would like to at least get the machinery rolling,” said Eugene R. Fidell, a military law expert in Washington. The Hicks case, he said, “is to show that this plane will fly.”

Mr. Hicks is charged with providing material support for terrorism. He trained with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, but officials have said he did not fire any shots in the war there.

There was initially broad hostility to him in Australia, but a movement has built support for Mr. Hicks, a onetime kangaroo skinner. Some Australian officials have characterized him as more of a “lost soul” or a “soldier wannabe” than a hardened terrorist. The movement was spurred in part by Major Mori, who has become something of an Australian media celebrity.

The dispute at the center of the current maneuvering began this month when Colonel Davis criticized Major Mori in an Australian newspaper. He said that “in the U.S. it would not be tolerated having a U.S. marine in uniform actively inserting himself into the political process.”

He also suggested that Major Mori might have violated a provision of military law that makes it a crime for a military officer to use “contemptuous words” about the president, vice president, secretary of defense or other top public officials.

    Detainee’s Lawyers Seek Removal of Prosecutor, NYT, 26.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/world/26gitmo.html?hp

Soldier gets 27 months in Iraq gang-rape case

Wed Mar 21, 2007 11:47PM EDT
Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier who pleaded guilty in connection with the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her family was sentenced to 27 months in prison, officials at Ft. Campbell in Kentucky said on Wednesday.

Pvt. Bryan Howard, 20, also drew a dishonorable discharge after entering a plea agreement at his court-martial, a statement from the post said.

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice and being an accessory after the fact. Murder and rape charges against Howard were dismissed by the government based on his limited role in the crimes, the announcement said.

At a hearing in Iraq last year, testimony indicated Howard was at a nearby location but did not participate in the crime itself.

Howard waived his request to have his case heard by a military panel and was tried by Col. Stephen Henley, who imposed the sentence.

Last month, Sgt. Paul Cortez, 24, was sentenced to 100 years in prison under a plea agreement he reached with prosecutors in the same case, although he will be eligible for parole in 10 years.

The incident happened after a group of soldiers drank whiskey, played cards and plotted to attack a family at Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, in March 2006. Some of those involved poured kerosene on the girl's body and lit her on fire in an attempt to cover up the crime.

Specialist James Barker, who earlier pleaded guilty in the case, was sentenced to 90 years in a military prison, also with the possibility of an earlier parole. A third man involved, former Pvt. Steven Green, has been discharged, is being held at a jail in Kentucky and faces trial in civil court.

A fourth soldier charged in the case, Pvt. Jesse Spielman, still faces court-martial.

    Soldier gets 27 months in Iraq gang-rape case, R, 21.3.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1929162520070322

U.S. soldier draws 10-year sentence in Iraq slayings

Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:11AM EDT
Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A U.S. soldier was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday after a court-martial found him guilty of killing three Iraqi detainees who were freed and told to run before being shot, officials at Fort Campbell in Kentucky said.

Sgt. Raymond Girouard, 24, of Sweetwater, Tennessee, had been charged with premeditated murder and other offenses that could have drawn a life sentence; but the military jury hearing his case convicted him on Friday of negligent homicide, a lesser offense.

Monday's sentence is subject to review by the commanding general at the post, and he could be paroled after serving about a third of the 10-year sentence, a spokesman said.

Girouard led a squad in May 2006 during a raid on a suspected insurgent camp near Thar Thar lake, southwest of Tikrit, when the killings occurred.

Three other soldiers under his command who were also charged with the deaths made plea agreements earlier and have been sentenced. Two received 18-year prison sentences and a third got nine months in jail.

The three had said Girouard ordered them to shoot the men. He had said he was under orders to kill all men of military age but denied ordering the slayings.

During an August hearing in Iraq that led to the charges, a witness testified he saw the prisoners trying to run away at full sprint, some with their blindfolds down, when they were shot.

The case is one of a number from the Iraq war in which U.S. military personnel were accused of crimes against Iraqi civilians.

    U.S. soldier draws 10-year sentence in Iraq slayings, R, 20.3.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1929608320070320

GI Guilty in Iraqi Detainees' Deaths

March 17, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) -- A military panel found a 101st Airborne soldier guilty of three counts of negligent homicide but not guilty of premeditated murder in the deaths of three Iraqi detainees.

Staff Sgt. Ray Girouard, 24, smiled as he hugged his defense lawyer and family members after the verdict was read. He faced up to life in prison had he been found guilty of premeditated murder.

The panel, which deliberated for four hours, also found Girouard guilty of obstruction of justice for lying to investigators, of conspiracy for trying to conceal the crime and of failure to obey a general order.

Girouard could be sentenced to a maximum of 21 years in prison, said his lawyer, Anita Gorecki. He could get a maximum of three years for each negligent homicide charge, five years for the conspiracy charge, five years for obstruction of justice and two years for failure to obey a general order. The sentencing portion of the trial begins Monday.

Girouard was accused of telling his soldiers to release detainees they captured during the May 9 raid near Samarra, Iraq, and then shoot them as they fled. He is the last and most senior soldier from the 101st Airborne Division to face trial in the killings.

Girouard testified during the trial that he lied to investigators about the slayings to protect his soldiers, and that he never told two of his soldiers, Spc. William Hunsaker and Pfc. Corey Clagett, to kill the detainees.

After he discovered the slayings, Girouard said, he decided to help them fake an attack, cutting Hunsaker and punching Clagett in the face, and lying to superiors by saying his soldiers shot the detainees in self-defense.

Gorecki stressed in closing arguments Friday that Girouard did not plan the slayings and that prosecutors never provided a motive for Girouard to order the killing during the mission.

Prosecutors characterized Girouard as a liar who can't be trusted and that he only changed his story when the other soldiers agreed to make plea agreements.

Hunsaker, Clagett and another soldier, Spc. Juston Graber, have pleaded guilty to other charges. Hunsaker and Clagett testified that Girouard gave them the orders, while Graber testified that the soldiers were given an option to participate in the plan to kill the detainees.

Clagett and Hunsaker pleaded guilty to murder and each were sentenced to 18 years in prison. Graber pleaded guilty to aggravated assault for killing a wounded detainee and was sentenced to nine months.

    GI Guilty in Iraqi Detainees' Deaths, NYT, 17.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Soldiers-Charged.html

Army Medic Is Found Guilty of Desertion

March 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:52 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WUERZBURG, Germany (AP) -- A U.S. Army medic who jumped out a window of his base housing and fled to California to avoid a redeployment to Iraq was convicted of desertion Tuesday at a court-martial. He could be sentenced to seven years in prison.

Spc. Agustin Aguayo, 35, who refused to return to Iraq because he believes war is immoral, admitted the less serious charge of being absent without leave but was unsuccessful in contesting the more serious desertion charge.

In a shaky voice, Aguayo told the court at the Army's Leighton Barracks near Wuerzburg how his convictions led him to flee his base rather than go back with his unit.

''I respect everyone's views and your decision, I understand that people don't understand me,'' he testified before the judge, Col. R. Peter Masterton. ''I tried my best, but I couldn't bear weapons and I could never point weapons at someone.''

Aguayo added: ''The words of Martin Luther come to mind, 'Here I stand, I can do no more.'''

Masterton sided with prosecutors in finding him guilty of desertion. He also was convicted of missing a troop deployment.

Capt. Derrick Grace, the lead prosecutor, said being absent without leave was by itself grounds for a desertion conviction.

''The accused was supposed to deploy with his unit to Iraq, and that was important to do,'' he said. ''Instead of deploying with his unit, the accused decided to jump out a window and run away.''

Masterton did not immediately issue a sentence, which could also include loss of pay and rank and a dishonorable discharge.

Aguayo, assigned to the 1st Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, served a year as a combat medic in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit in 2004 after the military turned down his request to be considered a conscientious objector.

He then jumped out of a window of his base housing in Germany on Sept. 2 rather than be forced to ship out for a second tour and fled home to California. He surrendered at California's Fort Irwin about three weeks later.

As his court-martial opened, Aguayo admitted he deliberately avoided going to Iraq.

''I understand that the formation was to move ... to Iraq your honor,'' he told the judge in a quiet, wavering voice. ''Yes, I deliberately stayed away from the movement. I knew that I wouldn't be making this movement.''

He challenged the Army's decision in U.S. federal courts but lost.

Aguayo, who was not the first soldier to be convicted of desertion for refusing to serve in Iraq, said he enlisted in 2002 to earn money for his education. Though military operations in Afghanistan were under way and discussions about Iraq were ongoing, he said he never thought he would have to fight.

    Army Medic Is Found Guilty of Desertion, NYT, 6.3.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-War-Objector.html

Mistrial for Officer Who Refused to Go to Iraq

February 8, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

SEATTLE, Feb. 7 — A military judge on Wednesday declared a mistrial in the court-martial of the Army officer who called the war in Iraq illegal and refused to join his unit when it deployed there last June.

The mistrial means that the officer, First Lt. Ehren K. Watada, could be retried in March, a spokesman for the base said.

Lt. Col. John Head, the military judge presiding over the case, declared the mistrial after he rejected an agreement Lieutenant Watada had reached with prosecutors before the trial began on Monday.

Under the pretrial deal, known as a stipulation agreement, Lieutenant Watada, 28, who is assigned to a Stryker brigade at Fort Lewis, about 45 miles south of Seattle, acknowledged refusing to deploy and speaking out against the war. In turn, prosecutors dropped two charges related to comments Lieutenant Watada made in interviews. His potential maximum sentence, if he were convicted, would be reduced to four years in an Army prison from six.

A lawyer for Lieutenant Watada, Eric Seitz, has maintained that there is no dispute over what Lieutenant Watada did, only over why he did it. He has said Lieutenant Watada’s actions amounted to free speech and civil disobedience protected by the Constitution.

Colonel Head has repeatedly refused to allow Lieutenant Watada to center his defense on the argument that the war is illegal. On Wednesday, after Mr. Seitz proposed that the judge require jurors to consider that Lieutenant Watada acted out of a mistaken belief that his actions were legal, Colonel Head declared the mistrial, citing confusion over the stipulation.

The judge, according to a statement released by Fort Lewis, became “concerned that the stipulation amounted to a confession by Lieutenant Watada to an offense to which he intended to plead not guilty.”

Lieutenant Watada’s conviction has largely been considered a foregone conclusion. But Mr. Seitz said the circumstances surrounding the mistrial, including the fact that the judge rejected a stipulation he had initially approved, could allow Lieutenant Watada to avoid prosecution altogether.

    Mistrial for Officer Who Refused to Go to Iraq, NYT, 8.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/08/us/08deploy.html

Trial Starts for Officer Who Refused to Go to Iraq

February 6, 2007
The New York Times
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

FORT LEWIS, Wash., Feb. 5 — A court-martial started here on Monday against an Army officer who refused to serve in Iraq last summer because, he has said, the war is illegal.

The officer, First Lt. Ehren K. Watada, was charged in July with missing a movement and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman after he refused to join his unit, the Third Brigade, Second Infantry, when it was deployed. Before and after his unit left, Lieutenant Watada gave interviews and made other public comments denouncing the war.

Lieutenant Watada has said the Bush administration has falsely used the 9/11 attacks to justify the war. He has said that the war has been proved unjust because unconventional weapons have not been found in Iraq and that American soldiers have mistreated the Iraqis.

Many enlisted soldiers have faced discipline for refusing to serve in Iraq. Lieutenant Watada is the first officer to refuse to do so publicly. He could face up to four years in prison and be dishonorably discharged if convicted on all counts.

The case has become a rallying point for antiwar groups, and scores of Lieutenant Watada’s supporters waved signs on Monday at a highway overpass outside Fort Lewis.

His prospects appear uncertain. The judge, Lt. Col. John Head, reinforced on Monday an earlier ruling that Lieutenant Watada could not base his defense on his contention that the war is illegal.

Lieutenant Watada has pleaded not guilty but he has not disputed that he missed the deployment or that he commented against the war.

“From what I understand, that under military law those in the military are allowed to refuse — in fact, have the right to refuse unlawful orders — a duty to refuse,” Lieutenant Watada said last month at a forum featuring war opponents, according to a transcript distributed on Monday by Zoltan Grossman, a professor at Evergreen State College who helped organize the forum.

In the transcript, Lieutenant Watada said being denied the chance to argue the legality of the war in his court-martial was “a violation of our most sacred premises of due process and, indeed, is un-American.”

“We will fight it,” he said. “I will always flight. We will try to appeal to the highest court.”

Lieutenant Watada, of Honolulu, asked to go to Afghanistan instead of Iraq but he was denied. He also tried to resign but was denied. He has been working in an administrative office here. Experts expect the trial to last much of this week.

On Monday, Army prosecutors and a defense lawyer, Eric Seitz, interviewed potential jurors drawn from a pool of officers on this post. Under questioning, several officers said it was “odd” that Lieutenant Watada refused to go because, as one put it, officers “should support our leadership and our tent command.”

Opening arguments could begin on Tuesday.

Outside the base, arguments were well under way. A woman held a sign reading “Lying and Bullying = Conduct Unbecoming a President.” A man a few feet away held one that said “Jail Weasel Watada.”

Specialist Pleads Guilty to AWOL

FORT BLISS, Tex., Feb. 5 (AP) — A soldier from Minnesota pleaded guilty on Monday to being absent without leave and missing a flight to Kuwait in July.

The soldier, Specialist Melanie McPherson, 28, told a military judge that she had left for Minnesota the day before her Army unit was to leave for Kuwait because she was afraid that she would be sent to Iraq as a truck driver or a military police officer. Specialist McPherson is trained as a photojournalist.

    Trial Starts for Officer Who Refused to Go to Iraq, NYT, 6.2.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/us/06deploy.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

U.S. files charges against 3 Guantanamo inmates

Sat Feb 3, 2007 1:45AM EST
Reuters
By Andrew Gray

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first trials under a new system for trying foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, moved a step closer on Friday when a U.S. military prosecutor filed charges against three inmates.

"The chief prosecutor for the Office of Military Commissions has sworn charges against Guantanamo detainees David Hicks of Australia, Salim Hamdan of Yemen, and Omar Khadr of Canada," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

The move was the first step toward trial under a system of military commissions set up by the Bush administration last year to try foreign terrorism suspects held at the detention camp at the U.S. military base in Cuba.

After a challenge from Hamdan, the Supreme Court in June rejected the administration's previous plan as a violation of international law.

Under the new system, the charges filed by the prosecutor, Air Force Col. Moe Davis, now have to be reviewed by other officials before the men can be formally charged.

Five years after the U.S. military started detaining suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters at the Guantanamo naval base, none of the 395 prisoners still held there has been tried.

Hicks was arrested in Afghanistan in late 2001 and has been accused of fighting for al Qaeda and conducting surveillance of U.S. and British embassies on its behalf.

The prosecutor filed charges against Hicks, 31, of providing material support for terrorism and attempted murder in violation of the law of war, the Pentagon said.

Hicks' military defense lawyer, Marine Corps Maj. Michael Mori, criticized the charges, saying even the prosecutor had stated that there was no evidence the Australian had shot at anyone in Afghanistan.

"The charge of material support is not part of the law of war and does not appear in any U.S. or Australian military manual as a law of war offense," Mori added in a statement.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard had demanded charges be filed against Hicks by the end of February.

"I'm glad that the charges are being laid and that the deadline I set has been met," Howard told reporters in Sydney on Saturday. "They are very serious charges and that is why they should be dealt with as soon as possible."

Hicks' father, Terry Hicks, was quoted by Australian Associated Press as saying, "I would be more relieved if David was facing a fair and just situation, not virtually the same thing that they went through before, which has been ruled as illegal."

BIN LADEN ALLEGATION

Hamdan has been accused by prosecutors of acting as Osama bin Laden's driver and of transporting weapons for al Qaeda. The charges filed against him are conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism.

Khadr has been accused of murdering one U.S. soldier with a grenade and wounding another during a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan. He was 15 when captured during the clash.

The prosecutor filed charges accusing him of murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, spying, conspiracy and providing material support to terrorism, the Defense Department said.

Human rights groups have called on the United States to close the Guantanamo prison but the Bush administration has insisted it is needed to hold dangerous individuals.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that detainees could go to American courts to seek their release or changes in confinement conditions. But in October 2006 President George W. Bush signed a law taking away prisoners' rights to the U.S. court system.

More than 770 prisoners have been imprisoned at Guantanamo since the United States began using the base to hold suspects captured during the war on terrorism that Bush launched in response to the September 11 attacks.

    U.S. files charges against 3 Guantanamo inmates, R, 3.1.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0228941720070203