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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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July 11th,
2006 - Capital Charges Filed In Rape-Slaying Case |
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Capital Charges Filed In
Rape-Slaying Case U.S. Details Allegations Against GIs in Iraq By Ellen Knickmeyer and Joshua Partlow Washington Post Foreign Service. Tuesday, July 11, 2006; A13 Baghdad, July 10 -- Military
authorities on Monday disclosed that they had filed capital charges of
premeditated rape and murder against four of the five active-duty soldiers
accused in an attack on an Iraqi family in March. A 15-year-old Iraqi girl,
who was allegedly raped, was killed along with her mother, father and younger
sister in the attack in a village near Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad. Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Spec. James P. Barker and Pfc.
Jesse V. Spielman are charged with rape, murder, housebreaking, arson and
drinking alcohol against military rules, the U.S. military said in a
statement. Another soldier, Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, was charged with
premeditated murder, rape and obstruction of justice. The four soldiers could
face the death penalty if convicted. The fifth active-duty
soldier, Sgt. Anthony W. Yribe, is charged with dereliction of duty and
making a false statement for allegedly failing to report the incident. Yribe
was not directly involved in the attack, U.S. military spokesmen in Baghdad
said. The incident is one of the
gravest of a series being investigated by the U.S. military in which
Americans are accused of killing Iraqi civilians. "Again, these are
alleged offenses," Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, a U.S. military
spokesman in Baghdad, told reporters. "They're presumed innocent until
proven guilty." A sixth man, Steven D.
Green, a former private, was discharged from the military for a
"personality disorder" after the Mahmudiyah killings but before
fellow soldiers identified American soldiers as the alleged culprits,
sparking the criminal investigation. Green pleaded not guilty last week in
Louisville to federal charges of rape and murder. A federal affidavit in
Green's case and accounts given to The Washington Post by neighbors, an uncle
of the 15-year-old, the local mayor and medical authorities allege that at
least four of the soldiers came to the home of Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi
after noticing her from their post at a U.S. Army checkpoint near her home. The assailants allegedly
shot and killed Abeer's father, mother and 7-year-old sister, then raped and
killed Abeer in another room. Abeer's body and part of the room were set on
fire, apparently in an attempt to conceal the crime, U.S. investigators and
Iraqi officials said. The federal affidavit
alleges that Green fired all of the shots and was one of two soldiers who
directly participated in the alleged rape. In Chambersburg, Pa., a
woman answering the telephone at a contact number listed for Spielman
declined to identify herself directly but said Spielman was her son. "We haven't been told
anything. We haven't heard anything, and that's the truth," the woman
said. Relatives had yet to be able to contact Spielman to hear from him
directly, she said. Asked if the family had
anything it wanted known about Spielman, she said, "Just that we're
proud of him," her voice breaking, before hanging up the phone. Yribe, the sergeant charged
with allegedly failing to report the killings, spoke last month at a memorial
for Army Spec. David J. Babineau, according to an entry posted by Yribe's
mother at a Web site for slain American service members. Babineau was killed in an
attack near Mahmudiyah last month. Two other U.S. soldiers with him were
abducted. Their mutilated bodies were found days later, with bombs planted
around them, officials said. "Tony is devastated as
he knows that you are, and wants you to know that you will never be alone,
and that he cares a great deal about you," Yribe's mother, Roberta
Dachtler, wrote then, in a message posted for Babineau's family. Reached Thursday by
telephone in her native Idaho, Dachtler said: "I personally am not
making statements at this point for my own son's protection. I do invite you
to check back again." U.S. soldiers initially said
insurgents killed the family, and relatives of the victims said little
publicly about the case because of the shame associated with rape in
conservative Muslim culture. Local authorities have said they do not believe
last month's killings of the three soldiers came in retaliation for the March
attack on Abeer and her family. All of the soldiers involved
were from the 502nd Infantry Regiment, which is attached to the 4th Infantry
Division. A Time magazine report in
March into allegations that Marines wrongly shot dead 24 civilians in the
western city of Haditha signaled the start of some of the first extensive and
public U.S. military investigations into cases of alleged U.S. killings of
Iraqi civilians. Eleven U.S. troops since have been charged in two unrelated
killings of a total of four Iraqi men. Researcher Julie Tate in
Washington contributed to this report. © 2006 The Washington Post
Company External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/10/AR2006071000614.html |