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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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May 12th,
2009 - Clemency is Last Hope for a More Normal Life 1st news article from
Stars and Stripes |
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Clemency is Last
Hope for a More Normal Life By Seth Robson Stars and Stripes May 12, 2009 Grafenwöhr, Germany - The
fates of three U.S. soldiers sentenced to long prison terms for the
premeditated murder of four detainees in Baghdad in 2007 lie in the hands of
Brig. Gen. David R. Hogg. Earlier this year, Master
Sgt. John Hatley, Sgt. Michael Leahy and Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Mayo - all
former Company A, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment noncommissioned
officers - were convicted in separate courts-martial in Vilseck, Germany. As
the Joint Multinational Training Command chief, and convening authority in
local courts-martial, Hogg must decide whether to grant clemency to the three
soldiers, who were all reduced in rank to private. Leahy was sentenced to life
in prison with the possibility of parole on March 28. Hatley received the
same sentence when his court-martial ended on April 16. Under a pre-trial
agreement, Mayo’s sentence was reduced to 35 years in prison when his
conviction was handed down on Feb. 21. According to the soldiers’
lawyers, Hatley and Leahy face 20 years in prison before they are eligible
for parole, while Mayo must serve at least 10 years. But Hogg has a wide
discretion to either uphold, reduce or overturn the sentences. The commander is expected to
make clemency decisions within 120 days of the end of each soldier’s trial,
according to the JMTC public affairs officer, Maj. Jennifer Johnson. The clemency process
includes the preparation of a written record of each trial, which is reviewed
by lawyers from both sides before it is presented to the convening authority
along with supporting material that defense lawyers think will help their
clients, Johnson said. Supporting material might include letters from family,
friends and other soldiers testifying to the soldiers’ good character and the
effect their confinement will have on the families, according to a legal
source. Hatley’s wife, Kim, for
example, wrote an eight-page letter to Hogg, pleading for clemency for her
husband. Her letter can be read at Stripes.com. There was evidence presented
at the trials that the men suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, along
with physical injuries, including brain trauma. Evidence also suggests that,
at the time of the killings, they were sleep-deprived. Testimony contended that the
men they are accused of killing were most likely insurgents, caught with
weapons shortly after an attack on U.S. troops. And there was evidence that
dangerous detainees were being released for lack of evidence in the weeks
before the incident. However, Hogg will balance
those factors with other considerations. During the courts-martial,
government lawyers made the point that, because the victims have never been
identified, the impact on the victims’ families cannot be gauged. Another consideration raised
by prosecutors is the impact of the case on good order and discipline in the
Army. Capt. John Riesenberg, assistant government trial counsel, told one
jury that its sentence should be aimed at stopping other soldiers from doing
what the Company A soldiers did. "These facts have
confronted American soldiers in past wars, they confront American soldiers in
this war and they will confront them in the future," he said. Perhaps the most significant
thing for Hogg to consider might be the message that the soldiers’ punishment
will send to Iraqis and the world. "Send a message to the
world that this is an Army that recognizes that it is different, that
American soldiers just don’t do this," Riesenberg said during one of the
trials. "They don’t execute detainees in the middle of the night by
shooting them in the back of the head when they are bound and blindfolded and
dump their bodies in a canal." Riesenberg told the court
that the detainee killings had undermined America’s war effort in Iraq. There is a precedent of at
least one soldier being granted clemency for war-time crimes. After the 1968 My Lai
massacre of hundreds of civilians, including women and children, in the
Vietnam War, there was an attempted coverup. At the time, Stars and
Stripes reported that "U.S. infantrymen had killed 128 Communists in a
bloody day-long battle." Eventually, the killings
were exposed by whistle-blowers and private media organizations. In his book "A Soldier
Reports," the field commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam at the time of
the massacre, Gen. William Westmoreland, described the killings as: "the
conscious massacre of defenseless babies, children, mothers and old men in a
kind of diabolical slow-motion nightmare that went on for the better part of
a day, with a cold-blooded break for lunch." Westmoreland states in his
book that only one person, a platoon leader by the name of 1st Lt. William
Calley Jr., was convicted of premeditated murder of "at least" 22
people following the incident at My Lai. He was sentenced to life in prison. In that case, Westmoreland
writes, Calley was granted clemency that reduced his sentence to 10 years. Ultimately, Calley served
only three and a half years of house arrest at Fort Benning, Ga. External link: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=62629 Family struggles with GI’s
conviction By Seth Robson Stars and Stripes May 12, 2009 Schweinfurt, Germany - The
basement where former Master Sgt. John Hatley used to work out, play video
games and reflect on his almost 20-year career in the U.S. Army is cold and
quiet now. Hatley, 40, left his house
in Schweinfurt for the last time in mid-April to travel to a military
courtroom in Vilseck. There, a jury convicted him in the premeditated
execution-style murder of four Iraqi detainees and sentenced him to life in
prison. According to court testimony, Hatley and two other members of his
unit drove four bound and blindfolded men to a remote location, made them
kneel on the ground, shot them in the head and dumped their bodies in a
nearby canal. After his conviction, Hatley’s
new home became a cell at the Army’s Mannheim detention facility. Now, his wife - as well as
his mother and father - struggles with the reality that Hatley is a convicted
murderer who could spend decades in jail. According to his lawyer, he’ll be
eligible for parole after 20 years. Since 2001, when the stocky
Texan and his Korean-American wife, Kim, came to Germany, that Schweinfurt
basement had been the place where Hatley went to lift weights, hit a punching
bag and play Playstation 2 games on a big-screen television. Large U.S. and Texas flags
hang on the wall alongside the colors of his old unit - Company A, 1st
Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment. The shelving on the wall holds awards,
trophies, coins and a copy of the book "Band of Brothers," which is
signed by members of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. There are also
KIA bracelets with the names of six Company A members who died in Iraq from
2006 to 2008. A week after his
court-martial, Kim Hatley stood shivering in the basement, contemplating life
without her husband. She had just 90 days to vacate the house and return to
the United States. Joining the family The small but energetic
woman was raised in New York City by Americans who picked her face out of a
newspaper advertising Korean babies for adoption, she said. Kim Hatley talked
passionately in a thick New York accent about her battle to free her husband
and the other two Company A soldiers convicted of murder. She’s been involved with the
U.S. Army since she joined at age 17 through the delayed-entry program, she
said. "I wanted to give back
to my country because I was adopted. I turned 18 in boot camp," she
recalled. Kim, now 43, served six
years, working as an intelligence analyst in Germany before leaving the
service to raise her son, Nick, born in July 1991. She met John Hatley, then a
staff sergeant and a veteran of Desert Shield/Desert Storm, through a mutual
friend while working at the student loan company Sally Mae in Killeen, Texas,
in 1997. "On our first date, we
had coffee. He was very handsome and charismatic," she recalled. Kim Hatley quickly bonded
with her husband’s large family, which she described as "a family that
every child would hope to have." Hatley’s parents, Darryl and
Ann, still live in the small central Texas town where he grew up - the only
son in a family that includes four daughters. Growing up as a Baptist
preacher’s son in the 1970s, John Hatley was a happy child. He played football
and baseball at school and helped his dad with carpentry work to supplement
the family’s income. "He decided to join the
Army in 1989," Darryl Hatley recalled with the folksy twang of a Texas
preacher. "He wanted to advance his education and he just thought a lot
about the service. Whatever he did, he was very dedicated to it and he loved
the military." John and Kim married seven
months after they met, but soon found themselves separated by his military
commitments, including a six-month stretch when he deployed to Bosnia in
1999. Deadly deployments Three years after the couple
came to Schweinfurt, Hatley deployed to Iraq - from 2004 to 2005 - as an
operations NCO with the 1st Infantry Division. "Halfway through that
mission, he was selected as Company A first sergeant. He was elated when he
was given the company," Kim Hatley said. The 2nd "Dagger"
Brigade, which included Company A, had 43 soldiers killed in action during
that deployment. When John Hatley returned
from Iraq, he stayed on as the unit first sergeant, distinguishing himself by
keeping a lid on the sort of post-deployment problems that many units
experience when they come home, his wife said. "Infantry soldiers in
garrison - there’s the clubs and whatever. Sometimes it happened where
soldiers will get in a little bit of trouble. He just did an exceptional job
of controlling that. He put a stop to it," she said. John offered his time off
duty and was always available if soldiers needed someone to talk to, she
said. Between deployments, he
would return to Texas on leave and speak at his father’s church, Darryl
Hatley said. "The reason he was
speaking at the church was not just telling about how difficult it is when he
loses his boys. He told the church that, whatever you do, continue to pray
for all the boys in the military," he said. John never asked for
anything for himself, he said. "It was always for the
Iraqi children and his soldiers. He realized that some of the soldiers didn’t
have the support from family and friends that he had. He said, ‘Remember when
you send a care package, send it for the kids,’ " Darryl Hatley said. When the Dagger Brigade got
orders to deploy to Iraq again in 2006, Kim Hatley volunteered as the Company
A Family Readiness Group leader. "With the news that
violence was increasing in Iraq, the level of anxiety before the deployment
was rising," she said. Before the deployment, John
Hatley went back to Texas for a weekend with his family. "He didn’t know if he
would be back or not," his father said. "This was the mindset he
had when this many folks were getting killed. The picture I have is seeing
him leaving us, his sisters and his mom leaving at the airport, and the
expression on his face because he wanted to be home." The six deaths of Company A
soldiers during the deployment hit John Hatley hard, his father said. "John cried when he
lost a soldier because he considered [each one] his son," Darryl Hatley
said, but added that his son never talked about the deaths during telephone
calls home from downrange. "He never talked about
the KIAs. He is protective of his family. They come first in his life.
Primarily when he talked to us from downrange it was, ‘How are you doing?
Give me some details about what you are doing.’ He wanted some light stuff.
He wanted to know what his sisters were doing. Everything he’d be doing if he
was home with us," Darryl said. After the unit returned,
there was sadness at the loss of the six Company A soldiers, but relief that
another 144 made it home safely, Kim Hatley said. John Hatley was selected to
attend the U.S. Army’s Sergeants Major Academy but declined. He planned to
finish his 20 years of service by mentoring officers at East Carolina
University’s ROTC program, she said. "As much as he loves
his soldiers and the Army, he’s a tired infantry soldier," Kim Hatley
said. "He just wants to sit on the front porch and drink coffee and
watch the sun come up. He planned to finish out his term ensuring that the
next generation of officers understands the teamwork between officers and
NCOs." Legal troubles begin But one day early last year
John Hatley came home and told his wife that he’d been accused, along with
two other soldiers, of killing the four detainees. "He explained the
situation that was brought up to him by the command, but he would not discuss
it with me," she said. Her dominant emotion was
frustration, she said, adding: "I didn’t know what to think. I had no
idea what the outcome might be. When an individual goes through this type of
challenge, your mind tends to be realistic about it: prepare for the worst
and hope for the best." Testimony from fellow
soldiers during the courts-martial for the three soldiers gave an indication
of what happened that day in March or April 2007. After the shootings, Hatley
huddled with his troops in the motor pool of their grimy combat outpost in
southwest Baghdad and told them not to talk about what just happened,
according to testimony. He allegedly directed some of the junior guys to burn
the blindfolds and plastic handcuffs and to wash the blood off the Bradley. He told them that what
they’d just done was for their fallen comrades, according to testimony. Sgt. Daniel Evoy, who
witnessed the execution of one of the Iraqis, said three Company A soldiers,
including Staff Sgt. Karl O. Soto-Pinedo, were killed in action near the time
of the incident. "I think the first
sergeant got hit hard by Staff Sgt. Soto being killed. He was pretty much his
go-to guy. I think Hatley had resentment towards those guys (the
detainees)," Evoy said in court. Another soldier, Pfc. Joshua
Hupp, testified that Hatley told him to get rid of evidence in the back of
the Bradley. "There were zip cuffs
and pieces of cloth in the back. I threw them in a burn barrel. I was scared.
I was in Iraq. You didn’t know how high it went," he said, adding that
he was afraid of Hatley, the most powerful person at the combat outpost. In a statement investigators
read to the court, Hupp said he was scared and feared that Hatley would
"[expletive] me up." Trying to move on John Hatley’s mother said
the whole family was devastated when they learned of the charges, "but
we love him beyond words and have complete confidence in him. He is an
honorable man and always has been," she said. In the lead-up to the
court-martial, John and Kim Hatley took things day by day, Kim Hatley said. "We have been making
every day the best day of our lives as we have always done despite the
challenges that we are facing," she said at the time. While two other former
Company A NCOs - Michael Leahy and Joseph Mayo - have confessed to shooting
the detainees, Hatley has never admitted that he did anything wrong or
apologized for what happened. "My husband has never
admitted guilt," Kim Hatley said. "He always just described it as
an accusation. Whether it happened or not I don’t know because I wasn’t
there, but what I can say is that we lost six soldiers and John brought back
144." She said she can’t empathize
with the dead detainees’ families because the men were never identified. Army
investigators conducted a fruitless search of the crime scene and Navy divers
never found the bodies in a canal. "CID scoped the entire
area knocking on doors and asking if anybody is missing a father, an uncle, a
brother. Nobody is missing anybody," she said. She also said that based on
what Hatley’s fellow soldiers, their wives, and their mothers have told her,
the dead men were indeed insurgents. "They were not just
regular Iraqi civilians," she said. Darryl Hatley said his son’s
conviction and its impact on his family is hard to reconcile with John and
Kim Hatley’s years of selfless service. "You can’t really
believe the sentence. I’m looking at the life of an individual that I know.
I’m not guessing about him as a person. I’m not guessing about him and his
integrity," he said. After the trial, the couple
had a moment to embrace outside the courthouse and say goodbye to those who
testified for and against him at the trial. Then Hatley was taken to Mannheim
to start his sentence. Stars and Stripes requested
an interview with John Hatley through his wife, but was unable to talk to him
for this story. Previous requests to talk to prisoners at the Mannheim
detention facility have been denied. Kim Hatley has already
started packing up the couple’s belongings in Schweinfurt. She remains
upbeat, though she was unsure where she will end up. "The soldiers are there
for me. I will return to the States fairly soon. My first priority is to try
to find good employment with medical benefits because I won’t have that
anymore," she said. Her husband could be at
Mannheim for a year or two but will eventually be transferred to a prison in
the States such as Fort Leavenworth, Kan., which will allow more frequent
visits, she said. The convictions of Hatley,
Mayo and Leahy will be automatically appealed to a higher military court. In
the meantime, Kim Hatley has thrown herself into a campaign for clemency for
the three soldiers - a process through which Joint Multinational Training
Command chief Brig. Gen. David R. Hogg could decide to reduce their
sentences. "Myself and many
others, to include soldiers and families, have set what we feel is reasonable
goal of getting our boys - John, Joseph Mayo and Michael Leahy - released as
soon as possible," she said. External link: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=62628 |