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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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December 8th,
2007 - Sniper Accused of Murder Disputes Statement |
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Sniper Accused
of Murder Disputes Statement Sgt. Vela says officers changed his account of shooting an Iraqi. He says
he thinks the Army ‘should have had my back.’ By Ned Parker Los Angeles Times December 8, 2007 Baghdad - As a military
court prepares to try the last of three U.S. snipers on murder charges, the
soldiers have accused their commanding officers of pushing to expand rules of
engagement to produce more "kills" and then abandoning them when
they were accused of murder. Two soldiers already have
been acquitted of murder, but found guilty on lesser charges. The third, Army Sgt. Evan
Vela, faces a pretrial hearing Tuesday, seven months to the day after he shot
at close range a man who had wandered into a sniper camp. The area, 30 miles
south of Baghdad, was rife with Sunni militants. Vela alleges that
investigators changed the statement he made to them, and that a military
lawyer urged him to waive his right to a hearing - which he only won back on
appeal. Vela has acknowledged that he shot the man, but said he was only
doing his job and criticized his commanders for not looking out for him. "It seems like when
they should have had my back, they let me down," Vela said in an
interview. At Tuesday's hearing, Vela's
lawyers hope to have the statement thrown out. They say they will ask that he
be released from confinement in Kuwait, and that the trial, scheduled to
start Jan. 28, be moved to Ft. Richardson, Alaska, where Vela's battalion is
based. According to court testimony
and interviews, Vela's sniper unit was revamped in spring after the 1st Battalion
of the 25th Infantry Division's 501st Regiment suffered a number of
casualties in the Jurf Sakhar region. By June, as many as 20 soldiers had
been killed. In an interview, the unit's
leader, Sgt. Michael S. Hensley, who was acquitted of murder charges, said
that Sgt. Maj. Bernie Knight brought him in to get more kills. "The reason I am doing
this is I want to start killing some bad guys, I want to increase our kill
ratio," Hensley said Knight told him. Hensley said he agreed on
the condition that he would run the section by himself and report directly to
the battalion commander. The unit expanded from seven to 13 men. Knight and
Lt. Col. Robert Balcavage pushed the soldiers to become more aggressive,
Hensley said. "Balcavage and Knight,
they would throw out their things like, 'You guys don't need to worry if you
feel threatened for a second, don't hesitate to engage.' " Knight and Balcavage refused
to comment for this article. Their commander, Col. Michael Garrett, said they
had done nothing wrong. "We were all under pressure fighting an elusive
enemy," he said. Until January, the sniper
unit had killed no more than two people. But under Hensley's command, by June
it had killed at least 15 people. The platoon's senior
noncommissioned officer, Sgt. 1st Class Steve Kipling, testified that Knight
marginalized him. Scout platoon leader Lt. Matthew Didier, under whose
command the sniper section fell, said Balcavage and Knight took a strong
interest in what the sniper units did, and that Hensley sometimes would meet
alone with the battalion's operation officer. The unit also had sought
clearance for a baiting program, in which snipers would plant weapons and
parts and shoot Iraqis who picked them up, according to testimony by Kipling
and Didier. Vela and other soldiers said they were briefed on the plan, but
it is unclear whether it was implemented. The subsequent demise of the
sniper unit destroyed Didier's career. He plans to leave the Army after
receiving a letter of reprimand for his platoon's conduct. Murder charges were filed
against the snipers in three incidents. But it is the final shooting, of an
unarmed man who wandered into the sniper camp on May 11, that has drawn the
most attention. The five-man team was
positioned along the Euphrates River to look for anyone fleeing a late-night
raid on a house suspected to have a cache of rockets packed with chemicals.
According to sworn statements and testimony in three hearings, Vela fired two
bullets into the man's head at close range. At the time, Hensley hid the
incident from his battalion. Asked about it, Hensley provided a sworn
statement in which he said his soldiers had tried to restrain the Iraqi but
the man pointed a rifle at them. In the interview, Hensley defended
his actions. But he refused to say what happened because he might be called
to testify in Vela's case. "Anything that was done
to that insurgent was done to refrain him from making noise," Hensley
said. "We were in an area where we could not get resupplied. There was
only five of us out there with sniper weapons. We couldn't rapidly shoot at
anything. ... For all those reasons, this guy was killed out of
self-defense." Three weeks after that
shooting, Knight and Balcavage promoted Hensley to platoon sergeant. His
appointment lasted less than a month, however. With Balcavage on vacation, a
captain invited the Army's criminal investigators to look into allegations by
two lower-ranking soldiers, who had been punished by the unit for falling
asleep, that the snipers had murdered civilians. Before his November trial,
the last time he saw his superiors, Hensley said, was in late June when he
was brought to Balcavage's office and had charge sheets read against him. He
was escorted to a helicopter to fly to prison in Kuwait. He accused his superiors of
only taking issue with his actions after criminal investigators became
involved. "When they had issue with it, was when Criminal Investigation
Department came on station and suddenly everybody was in the spotlight,"
said Hensley, who was found guilty of planting a weapon and disrespecting an
officer. He also was demoted from staff sergeant. The battalion rounded up the
entire sniper unit as well and placed its members in solitary confinement.
When he was summoned for questioning, Vela said he was held for nearly seven
hours and threatened. "To get me to make a
statement, they threatened me that I would never see my family again. After I
made the statement, CID actually sat down at the computer and changed my
statement without me knowing it," Vela said in an unsworn statement at a
hearing last month to determine whether his case would go to trial. Vela was held for 30 days in
Kuwait without seeing a court-appointed lawyer, who then recommended by phone
that Vela waive his right to an Article 32 hearing, the equivalent of a grand
jury, to determine whether the case should go to court-martial. He agreed to waive it, but a
civilian defense team hired by his father appealed the decision and won.
Vela's defense team accused senior commanders, including Army Gen. Rick Lynch
of the Multi-National Division Center, of obstructing his access to a fair
trial. Vela also was asked to
testify with immunity at the trials of the two other snipers charged with
murder - Hensley and then-Spc. Jorge G. Sandoval Jr., who was convicted of
poor conduct for planting of a detonation wire on a body and demoted. At
Sandoval's trial, Vela broke down on the witness stand; at Hensley's, he said
he remembered nothing of the events. In August, a forensic
psychiatrist, Carol Malone Carr, the assistant director at the National Naval
Medical Center's Mental Health directorate, had diagnosed Vela with signs of
post traumatic stress disorder, including battle flashbacks, and suicidal
thoughts. The experience has left a
bitter taste for most soldiers. Sgt. Richard Hand, who had been on the May 11
mission, said he believed his association with the unit had ruined his
career, and that he planned to leave the Army. "They were very lax in
their care of anybody except themselves," he said. External link: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-snipers8dec08,1,4472879.story |