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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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May 17th,
2009 - Combat Stress Unit at Center of Iraq Slaying Trial |
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Combat Stress Unit at Center
of Iraq Slaying Trial By Brett Barrouquere Associated Press May 17, 2009 Paducah, Ky. - Pfc. Steven Dale
Green held on to his sergeant on the hood of a Humvee as it sped down a road
in a doomed effort to save the life of his leader. Staff Sgt. Phillip Miller,
who served in Iraq with Green, has testified the incident pushed the soldier
over the edge. "I call it his breaking
point," Miller said. Eleven days after Sgt.
Kenith Casica's death on Dec. 10, 2005, near Mahmoudiya, Iraq, Green sought
help from combat stress counselors. Army nurse practitioner Lt. Col. Karen
Marrs listened to Green talk about wanting to kill Iraqi civilians, gave him
a prescription for sleep medication and sent him back to his unit. The combat stress unit's
actions with Green have become central as defense lawyers try to persaude
jurors not to condemn him to death for rape and murder in Iraq. Green was
convicted May 7 for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi
and the shooting deaths of her family - an attack that took place three
months after Green visited the stress unit. Just as the penalty phase of
the trial began Monday, the role of combat stress units took on a new
prominence outside of the courtroom. Sgt. John M. Russell was arrested and
accused of shooting and killing five colleagues at such a unit at Camp
Liberty in Iraq. U.S. District Judge Thomas
Russell didn't mention the arrest specifically when he admonished jurors
Tuesday not to watch news broadcasts or read newspapers. Before that, Russell
had asked jurors simply to avoid news reports about Green's trial. The idea behind combat
stress units is to treat soldiers for battlefield fatigue near where they
served with the goal of returning them to their units. Pulling them out of the
area, Marrs testified last week, only does more psychological damage because
the soldiers feel they have abandoned their colleagues. In Green's case, Marrs said
that despite wanting to kill Iraqi civilians - which was a common sentiment
among soldiers in his unit - Green had no plans to act on that impulse. Marrs
recommended a follow-up visit with combat stress - an appointment kept a week
after the al-Janabi family died. Dr. Pablo Stewart, a
psychiatrist at the University of California-San Francisco, told jurors Marrs
and other combat stress teams are in a tough situation, charged with treating
soldiers but also mindful of pleasing commanders, who wanted soldiers to stay
in the field with their units. "She's trying to please
her command and at the same time treat her patients," Stewart said.
"I see that as an almost impossible job." That impossible job left
some of Green's fellow soldiers with little confidence in combat stress
units. Eric Lauzier, a one-time
staff sergeant who served with Green and was medically retired in 2008,
testified he refused to go to combat stress unless required to do so. Lauzier, who was diagnosed
with post-traumatic stress disorder, said combat stress did little to help
soldiers. "I call it
fix-a-flat," Lauzier said. External link: http://www.theleafchronicle.com/article/20090517/NEWS01/905170362 A Day in the Trial of Ex-Soldier
Convicted of Murder in Iraq By Dave Alsup Cable Network News May 17, 2009 Paducah, Kentucky - He arrives in the early morning hours, when
the downtown streets here are empty and quiet. An electric gate jerks to
life as the black sedan with tinted windows pulls into a parking lot
protected by an iron fence. It's five blocks from the local county jail to
the U.S. Federal Courthouse of Western Kentucky. Not even a five-minute
drive. This is the only freedom
Steven Green knows. He's ushered from the car by
a contingent of U.S. marshals. It's 30 feet out in the open air. A brief
chance to look up at the clouds. A moment to hear sounds not reverberated
against cell walls: a bird, a car engine, a breeze in nearby trees. He is a lanky 24-year-old.
He looks lean, like he could grow a little more. Not really a man, but too
old to be called a boy. Regardless, he is a
convicted murderer, rapist, and conspirator. The orange prison coveralls
make him look a bit taller. The jury never sees Green in the fluorescent
jumpsuit. Inside the federal courthouse there is a change of clothes. Usually
it's a button-down shirt and a pair of khakis. He keeps his cuffs buttoned. He looks nerdish, and you
half expect him to start working on the courtroom computers. Not like a man
who once asked FBI agents if they thought he was "a monster." Evidence comes in a steady
display of pictures and videos that seem oddly connected. The snapshot of a
smiling woman lying in a field of bluebonnets. The image of a dead Iraqi
strapped to the hood of an Army Humvee. A high school yearbook photo of a
Texas football team. The diagram of a brain cell. Video of a firefight shot
from an insurgent perspective. The most unusual trial
exhibit sits against the wall behind the prosecutor's table: a small
architectural mock-up of a home. Roughly 18 by 18 inches, it is like no home
in Kentucky. A flat-topped square with a raised rectangular structure at the
top providing access to the roof. It is beige in color. The tiny windows have
tiny bars. It is a 3-D map of a crime scene. Earlier this month, a jury
found Green guilty of a raping a 14-year-old girl who lived in the home in
Iraq, then killing her and setting her body on fire to destroy evidence.
Green also was found guilty of killing the girl's parents and 6-year-old
sister. There is a casual manner to
Steven Green's daily entrance into the courtroom. It defies the circumstances
of the moment and the imagination without proper context. This is the
sentencing phase of his death penalty trial and he is the defendant. Testimony resumes Monday,
with the expectation of closing arguments as early as Wednesday. Green faces
life in prison without the possibility of parole, or death in prison. The testimony transports the
court to unusual places: across Texas following Green's dysfunctional
childhood, into the sense of structure and order of Army basic training at
Fort Benning, Georgia, and back to the chaos of horrendous combat situations
four years ago in Iraq's Triangle of Death. Green is a former member of
the 101st Airborne Division, inserted into a very bad section of Iraq during
some of the worst fighting of the war. His memories are of a place known as Yusufiya,
20 miles south of Baghdad. Jurors form a mental picture of his life then as
former members of his unit, Bravo Company, take the stand. Amid the military lingo, the
witnesses pause occasionally, struggling to convey the contempt, confusion,
exhaustion, and death they knew. They speak of being shot, of killings, booby
traps and sudden bloody dismemberments. This toxic emotional mix is
what former Pfc. Green knew in 2005 and 2006 almost every day, along with the
very real possibility of his own death. If the jury opts for its most extreme
option - the death penalty - unlike his daily death watch in Iraq, at least
Green will see that coming. When a friend or family
member enters the courtroom, Green tries to make anxious eye contact. He
whispers a lot to his attorneys. His hands stay around his face and his gaze
on the table when the victims' family speak through an interpreter. The Al-Janabis' relatives do
not speak of details of the crime. The questions come only from the
prosecution, and the defense does not cross-examine. They speak of an orchard
worker, Kassem, and his wife, Fakhriya. They speak of a simple family who did
not own either their home or the furniture. They speak of a funny 6-year-old
girl, Hadeel, being chased through the orchard trees by siblings. They speak
of a 14-year-old girl, Abeer, with dreams of living in the city and wearing
nice clothes. The jury never hears the
words "rape" or "murder" come from the translation. It is
a testimony about loss. The defendant sits rigid the entire time. The mention of other names
comes frequently in court. Spc. James Barker: The jury knows him as the
soldier who concocted a plan over a card game to target the Al-Janabi family -
a mission of gang-rape and murder. Sgt. Paul Cortez: The defense counsel
describes him as senior non-commissioned officer, the one who approved the
mission as long as he was the first to rape Abeer. Pfc. Jesse Spielman: His
name is familiar as the fourth member of the squad to leave their traffic
checkpoint on March 12, 2006, after donning disguises, and enter the
Al-Janabi home. Pfc. Bryan Howard is the soldier left behind to guard their
post. Each is out of the Army,
sentenced to prison time by a military court for his part in the crime and
the failed coverup. Green, the trigger man, is the odd man out. He sits
before the jury, convicted in civil court for this war atrocity. His early
release from the Army two months after the crime is a possible death
sentence, while three of his accomplices face the possibility of parole from
an Army prison in 2016. Green still sports a
military haircut. Seated at the table alongside his defense team, he often
leans over and speaks with Darren Wolff, a former Marine Corps captain turned
Kentucky defense lawyer. There are letters on file in the court docket from
Wolff petitioning Defense Secretary Robert Gates to re-enlist Green in the
Army, so the former private could face trial under the Uniform Code of
Military Justice. It is not unheard of in this war. Wolff points out in
conversation that the Pentagon re-activated two former Marines after word
surfaced of an alleged murder in Falluja in 2004. He says Green should face a
jury of his military peers. The fact that has not happened, and the former
Army private sits in the U.S. District Court of Western Kentucky tried under
the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act for crimes committed in Iraq,
may be a point of appeal. At the end of the day, Green
exits the courtroom, climbs back into his prison garb and is shackled.
There's another short walk to the car, then a five-block return drive to take
in the world. He returns to solitary confinement. This is his human
interaction for the day. External link: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/17/iraq.soldier.sentencing/ |