Death Penalty Recommended for US Soldiers

This was reported earlier this week (extracted from Yahoo News)
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press Writer

An Army investigator has recommended that four soldiers accused of murder in a raid in Iraq should face the death penalty if convicted, according to a report obtained Saturday by The Associated Press.

Lt. Col. James P. Daniel Jr. concluded that the slayings were premeditated and warranted the death sentence based on evidence he heard at an August hearing. The case will now be forwarded to Army officials, who will decide whether Daniel's recommendation should be followed.

The soldiers, all from the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division's 187th Infantry Regiment, are accused of killing three Iraqi men taken from a house May 9 on a marshy island outside Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad.

Staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, Spc. William B. Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey R. Clagett and Spc. Juston R. Graber have claimed they were ordered to "kill all military age males" during the raid on the island. According to statements from some of the soldiers, they were told the target was an al-Qaida training camp.

Hunsaker told investigators that he and Clagett were attacked by the three men, who were being handcuffed, and shot them in self-defense. Clagett said he was hit in the face, and Hunsaker claimed he was stabbed during the attack.

Prosecutors argue the soldiers conspired to kill the men and then altered the scene to fit their story. They contend Girouard stabbed Hunsaker as part of the killing plot.

Clagett, Girouard and Hunsaker also are accused of threatening to kill another soldier who witnessed the slayings. Girouard, the most senior soldier charged, faces several additional charges, including sexual harassment and carrying a personal weapon on duty.

Paul Bergrin, Clagett's civilian attorney, said he was surprised that Daniel recommended the case be taken to trial at all.

"I'm extremely disappointed and disheartened," Bergrin said Saturday. "They are being used as pawns in the war on terror. They followed the rules of engagement. They were confronted with violence by a known al-Qaida training camp member."

Other lawyers in the case, several of whom are deployed to Iraq, did not immediately respond to e-mail requests for comment.

The soldiers are expected to be tried at Fort Campbell. They have been jailed in Kuwait since their arrests this year.

The U.S. military has not executed a soldier since the 1960 hanging of a soldier convicted rape and attempted murder.

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This is not the first case of alleged abuse by US soldiers:

Taken from Green Left Weekly, April 6, 2005.
US Army documents released in early May have revealed that a US military “investigation” into the alleged rape of two Iraqi women by US soldiers was shut down for lack of evidence — without contacting the alleged victims. It is alleged that the women were attacked by four soldiers guarding a mall. One of the soldiers interviewed by “investigators” said, “I know the women were Iraqi. I however don’t know if they were raped, or were prostitutes, or were just looking for sex.” Suzanne Goldberg, the journalist who broke the story for the British Guardian, explained that the investigation record consisted entirely of “not very rigorous” interviews with soldiers.

Taken from Daily Telegraph, “Body of 'US soldiers' rape victim' made medic” -August 7 2006
An Iraqi army medic told a United States military hearing yesterday that he was sick for days after finding the naked and burned body of a 14-year-old girl, allegedly raped and murdered by US soldiers.

The doctor was testifying on the first day of a hearing to determine whether five soldiers will face court martial for the rape and murder on March 12 of Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the killing of her parents and sister.

The medic, whose name was withheld for security reasons, had been called to a house in the hardline Sunni town of Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad. He said he found the girl naked, her torso and head burned. She had a bullet wound under one eye.

"I was feeling very bad," he said. "I was sick for almost two weeks."
He found Abeer's five-year-old sister, Hadeel, in another room. A bullet had blown the back of her head out. Their parents had also been shot.

Prosecutors say a squad from the 502nd Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, drank alcohol heavily before abandoning a checkpoint, changing clothes and entering the victim's house nearby.

Four soldiers - Sgt Paul Cortez, Specialist James Barker, Pte Jesse Spielman and Pte Bryan Howard - are charged with conspiracy to rape and murder. A fifth, Sgt Anthony Yribe, is charged with failing to report the attack. A sixth man, former Pte Steven Green, faces rape and murder charges in a civilian court. He was discharged from the military in May after a psychiatric evaluation.

Taken from the Guardian “The other prisoners“ Thursday May 20, 2004
Most of the coverage of abuse at Abu Ghraib has focused on male detainees. But what of the five women held in the jail, and the scores elsewhere in Iraq? Luke Harding reports

The scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was first exposed not by a digital photograph but by a letter. In December 2003, a woman prisoner inside the jail west of Baghdad managed to smuggle out a note. Its contents were so shocking that, at first, Amal Kadham Swadi and the other Iraqi women lawyers who had been trying to gain access to the US jail found them hard to believe.
The note claimed that US guards had been raping women detainees, who were, and are, in a small minority at Abu Ghraib. Several of the women were now pregnant, it added. The women had been forced to strip naked in front of men, it said. The note urged the Iraqi resistance to bomb the jail to spare the women further shame.

Astonishingly, the secret inquiry launched by the US military in January, headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, has confirmed that the letter smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a woman known only as "Noor" was entirely and devastatingly accurate.

In Iraq, the existence of photographs of women detainees being abused has provoked revulsion and outrage, but little surprise. Some of the women involved may since have disappeared, according to human rights activists. Honour killings are not unusual in Islamic society, where rape is often equated with shame and where the stigma of being raped by an American soldier would, according to one Islamic cleric, be "unbearable". The prospects for rape victims in Iraq are grave; it is hardly surprising that no women have so far come forward to talk about their experiences in US-run jails where abuse was rife until early January.