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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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August 7th, 2006 - Court Told US
Troops Raped Iraqi Girl 1st
News article by the New York Times |
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Court Told US Troops Raped
Iraqi Girl Reuters Monday, August 7, 2006; 3:14 PM Baghdad - A U.S. military court
in Baghdad heard graphic testimony on Monday of how three U.S. soldiers took
turns raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl before murdering her and her family. At the hearing into whether
four U.S. soldiers should be court-martialled for rape and murder, a special
agent described what took place in Mahmudiya in March, based on an interview
he had with one of the men, Specialist James Barker. The case, the fifth
involving serious crimes being investigated by the U.S. military in Iraq, has
outraged Iraqis and led Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to call for a review of
foreign troops' immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law. Special Agent Benjamin
Bierce recalled that Barker described to him how they put a couple and their
six-year-old daughter into a bedroom of their home, but kept the teenage girl
in the living room, where Barker held her hands while Sergeant Paul Cortez
raped her or tried to rape her. Barker then switched
positions with Cortez and attempted to rape the girl but said he was not sure
if he had done so, Bierce told the hearing. Barker also told the special
agent he heard shots from the bedroom and shortly afterwards Private Steven
Green emerged from the room, put down an AK-47 assault rifle and raped the
girl while Cortez held her down. Shot Her Several Times Barker told Bierce that
Green then picked up the weapon and shot her once, paused, and shot her
several more times. Military prosecutors are
expected to set out their case against Private First Class Jesse Spielman, 21,
Barker, 23, Cortez, 23 and Private First Class Bryan Howard, 19, who face
charges of rape and murder among others. If court-martialled after
the Article 32 hearing -- the military's equivalent of a U.S. grand jury --
and found guilty, they could face the death penalty. The hearing began on
Sunday and is expected to last several days. Green, 21, faces the same
charges in a U.S. federal court in Kentucky, home of the 502nd Infantry
Regiment, his former unit. Green, who has pleaded not guilty, was discharged
from the army for a "personality disorder." A fifth soldier, Sergeant
Anthony Yribe, is charged with dereliction of duty and making a false
statement and will also appear at the hearing at a U.S. base in Baghdad. Defense Attorney Captain
Jimmie Culp was blowing chewing gum bubbles while Yribe, sitting to his left,
began sucking on a red lollipop during the testimony. An Iraqi army medic told the
hearing on Sunday he entered the house and found the body of 14-year-old
Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi naked and burned from the waist up, with a single
bullet wound beneath her left eye. Special Agent Gary Griesmyer
recounted Cortez' account of the day. "While they were playing cards and
drinking Iraqi whiskey, the idea came to go out to an Iraqi house, rape a
woman and murder her family," he testified. Cortez said Barker told the
young girl to "shut up" after she was raped, Griesmyer said. Bierce said Barker told him
he poured kerosene from a lamp on to the girl. It was not clear who set her
on fire. Barker later signed a sworn
statement based on the interview, in which he said that on the day of the
attack he, Cortez, Spielman and Green had been playing cards and drinking
whisky mixed with an energy drink. They then went to the rear of the
checkpoint where they were based to hit golf balls. Green said he wanted to go
to a house and kill some Iraqis, Barker wrote in his sworn statement. After the rape and murders,
he wrote that he began to grill chicken wings. The hearing continues. © 2006 Reuters External link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/07/AR2006080700173.html Iraq Hearing on Rape and
Murder Opens New York Times By Kirk Semple August 7, 2006 Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, Aug.
7 - A former American soldier who is accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi
and killing her and three members of her family told fellow soldiers that
“all Iraqis are bad people” after his unit began taking casualties, according
to testimony in an American military hearing on Sunday. The former soldier, Steven
D. Green, a private who was discharged in May after a psychiatric evaluation,
also sought help for combat stress while deployed in Iraq, according to his
former battalion commander, Lt. Col. Thomas Kunk. Colonel Kunk was one of four
witnesses who testified Sunday. The hearing, which is expected to continue
for several days, is the latest chapter in the prosecution of the case
involving Mr. Green and five active-duty soldiers, all of whom are accused of
involvement in the rape and killings on March 12 in the town of Mahmudiya,
south of Baghdad. The case, one of several
recent ones in which American soldiers have been accused of killing unarmed Iraqi
civilians, has embarrassed the American military, infuriated Iraqis and
strained relations between American authorities in Baghdad and their Iraqi
counterparts. The hearing in Baghdad,
conducted under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, is
roughly equivalent to a grand jury proceeding and will determine whether
there is enough evidence to convene a court-martial to try the five
active-duty soldiers. Specialist James P. Barker,
Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, Pfc. Bryan L. Howard and Sgt. Paul E. Cortez have
been accused of rape, murder and arson - military prosecutors say they set
the girl’s body on fire to conceal evidence. The fifth soldier in the
hearing, Sgt. Anthony W. Yribe, is accused of dereliction of duty for not
reporting the crimes, but he is not thought to have been at the house where
the crimes are said to have taken place. Mr. Green faces rape and
murder charges in a federal court in Kentucky. He has pleaded not guilty to
the charges. In his testimony, Colonel
Kunk said the soldiers’ company - Company B of the First Battalion, 502nd
Infantry, with the 101st Airborne Division - had a particularly dangerous
assignment to patrol a stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency south of
Baghdad. The job took a high toll, with eight of the company’s soldiers
killed from September through June. Mr. Green and two of the
accused soldiers, Private Spielman and Sergeant Cortez, were “wallowing in
self-pity” early in the year amid the violence and the death of fellow
soldiers, Colonel Kunk said. They were among several soldiers who sought help
for combat stress, he said. Colonel Kunk said at the
hearing that others had told him about Mr. Green’s comment, “all Iraqis are
bad people.” He was so concerned about it that he personally discussed it
with Mr. Green, he said, asking him whether he intended to kill Iraqis. But during the hearing, the
line of questioning turned and Colonel Kunk never testified about Mr. Green’s
response. Earlier in the day, an Iraqi
Army medic described a gruesome tableau of violence he encountered when he
walked into the house where, according to investigators, the rape and
killings took place. The medic, who testified
anonymously for security reasons, said he found the naked and burned body of
the girl with a bullet hole in her face and saw the bullet-ridden bodies of
her sister and parents - a scene that left him “sick for almost two weeks,”
he said. Two Iraqi witnesses also
took the stand, but reporters were barred from hearing them, and officials
did not disclose details of their testimony. A trial lawyer had requested the
restriction out of concern that public exposure might endanger them. The hearing took place on
another day of scattered violence around Iraq. Three American soldiers were
killed Sunday by an improvised bomb planted along a road southwest of
Baghdad, the American military said in a statement early Monday. A suicide bomber wrapped in
explosives detonated himself in the middle of a crowd of mourners attending
the funeral of a member of the Tikrit city council, an Interior Ministry
official said. Five people were killed and 15 wounded, the official said. At least 15 bodies, all with
their hands tied behind their backs and gunshots to the head, were found in
different Baghdad neighborhoods, according to the ministry official. Iraqi employees of The New
York Times contributed reporting from Falluja and Kirkuk for this article. Copyright 2006 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07iraq.html G.I. Tells Why He Testified
in Rape-Murder Inquiry New York Times By Paul von Zielbauer August 7, 2006 Baghdad, Iraq, Aug. 8 - A
United States Army private close to four soldiers charged with killing an
Iraqi family and raping a 14-year-old girl in March described today how he
became the whistleblower in the case and how, once he spoke to military
investigators, he feared for his life. Pfc. Justin Watt, who was in
the same platoon as the four soldiers and another former soldier accused of
the crimes, said he came forward after piecing together evidence from
soldiers whom he suspected were involved in the rape and killings. He felt
obligated to say something, he told a military prosecutor Monday at a hearing
for the four accused soldiers, out of a sense of loyalty to the friends who
had fought in Iraq and died. "We’d come through hell
with each other, and there were a lot of good men who died,” Private Watt
testified. “And this happened - for
what? We’re just trying to do a little good over here,” he said, describing
his decision to alert his superiors about his suspicions that members of his
own platoon were involved, “and it had to be done." Specialist James P. Barker,
Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, Pfc. Bryan L. Howard and Sgt. Paul E. Cortez are the
four soldiers accused of raping the girl and killing her and her family in
their home in Mahmudiya, a volatile town south of Baghdad where the soldiers
had patrolled. The four, with Company B of the First Battalion, 502nd
Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, are also charged with arson; military
prosecutors accused them of burning the girl’s body with kerosene in an
attempt to conceal evidence. A fifth soldier, Sgt.
Anthony W. Yribe, is charged with dereliction of duty for failing to report
the crimes. Prosecutors do not believe he was at the house where the crimes
are said to have taken place. A sixth person, Steven D.
Green, a private who was discharged in May after a psychiatric evaluation,
was said by other soldiers to have been the one who conceived of a plan to
kill the family on March 12. Private Watt testified today that he heard Mr.
Green say, "I want to kill and hurt a lot of Iraqis." Mr. Green faces rape and
murder charges in a federal court in Kentucky. He has pleaded not guilty. Private Watt described how
he first heard of the murders from Sergeant Yribe, who confided in him about the
grisly incident. Sergeant Yribe told him a shotgun shell had been found at
the scene of the murders; Watt had never seen an Iraqi with a shotgun during
his 11-month deployment, he testified. Unable to stop thinking
about what he suspected, he approached Private Howard and asked about what he
knew. "I wanted to see if I
could confirm my suspicions that there were more people involved,"
Private Watt testified. "I believed there were American forces
involved." Private Watt first reported
his suspicions to a combat stress team in Mahmudiya, describing a need to
learn the truth of the matter and the disillusion that followed. "Investigation is not
my job,” he said under cross-examination by Specialist Barker’s military
lawyer today. “But if something went down - something terrible like that -
then it’s my obligation to come forward." Private Watt added: "I
find out that guys in my squad, guys I trusted with my life, are allegedly
responsible for one of the most brutal rapes-slash-murders I’ve ever seen.” Eventually, he said, he grew
uneasy about working with the accused soldiers at traffic checkpoints,
flashpoints for violence often directed at stationary American soldiers.
”Everyone has a weapon and grenades," he said, referring to his fellow
soldiers at such checkpoints. Defense lawyers, facing an
enormous legal task in defending soldiers linked by evidence and their own
statements to such a gruesome crime against civilians, appear intent on
establishing combat stress as a contributing factor to the crimes the
soldiers are accused of. Company B patrolled a
dangerous region south of Baghdad where Sunni Arab insurgents and American
and Iraqi Army forces frequently engaged in deadly clashes. "I watched
two guys I cared a lot about die right in front of me," Private Watt
said. "I was going to get a memorial tattoo of all the guys, but there’s
not enough room on my arm.” The hearing, known as an
Article 32, combines elements of a grand jury proceeding and a jury trial to
determine whether there is sufficient evidence to recommend the charges be
brought to a court-martial. Prosecutors also called
Sergeant Yribe to testify today, but he declined, invoking a right against
self-incrimination that does not exist once a soldier is court-martialed. An Army investigator,
Special Agent Benjamin Bierce, told prosecutors that Specialist Barker had
told him that he had participated in the rape and murders, and that Mr.
Greene had apparently killed the family in a bedroom after raping the girl. Meanwhile, violence continued
in Iraq today and took on a political dimension in Baghdad as American troops
began patrolling areas here to quell a surge in sectarian killings. In Baghdad, overnight
fighting between American forces and members of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal
to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, killed two of the militia’s
fighters, wounded 18 and set fire to four houses and 10 cars, an Interior
Ministry official said. Late Sunday, Mohamed Salman,
an envoy of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, visited the families of the
those killed in an American airstrike in Sadr City as well as the civilians
wounded at Imam Ali hospital, Mr. Maliki’s office said in a statement. Mr.
Salman gave two million Iraqi dinars, or about $1,350, to the families of the
two people killed in the fighting, and one million dinars to each of the
wounded, the statement said. The visit from a high-level
Maliki aide and the cash payment highlighted the political influence that Mr.
Sadr and Shiites under his sway have in national politics in Iraq. A roadside bomb exploded
near a police check point in Baghdad shortly before 1 p.m., killing four
civilians and injuring three policemen, an Interior Ministry official said. In the New Baghdad
neighborhood in the capital, armed men invaded a barber shop, killed the
barber and wired the shop’s door with an improvised bomb that killed one
civilian and injured three others, the official said. In Samarra, a largely Sunni
Arab city 60 miles north of Baghdad, at least nine people were killed and 10
wounded when a suicide bomber strapped with explosives blew himself up at a
police station, Reuters reported. In Ramadi, gunmen took
control of a military recruitment center, launching a battle that left 15
injured, including women and children, an official at a Ramadi hospital said. Copyright 2006 The New York
Times Company External link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/world/middleeast/07cnd-iraq.html |