Excerp: Rape-Slaying in Iraq by US Soldiers

Excerp: Rape-Slaying in Iraq by US Soldiers [+ favourites]

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Four witnesses took the stand Sunday as a preliminary hearing began for four U.S. soldiers charged in connection with the rape and slaying of an Iraqi and the killing of her family in Iraq.

The witnesses testifying on the first day of the hearing at Camp Victory, near Baghdad, included an Iraqi army medic who graphically described the state of the bodies after the alleged crimes in Mahmoudiya.

Members of the media were allowed to hear the testimony of the medic and of the soldiers' battalion commander, Lt. Col. Thomas Kunk. The other two witnesses were unidentified Iraqis, and reporters were not permitted to hear their testimony, The Associated Press said.

The medic, who was not identified for security reasons, said he was the first emergency responder on the scene and detailed the gunshot wounds found on the family's bodies, according to the AP.

"I was feeling very bad," he was quoted as saying. "I was sick for almost two weeks."

Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Spec. James P. Barker, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard were all charged with conspiring with former Pfc. Steven D. Green to commit the alleged crimes, the military said.

The four could face the death penalty, the military has said. The so-called Article 32 hearing is the military equivalent of a probable cause or preliminary hearing.

A fifth soldier, Sgt. Anthony W. Yribe, was charged with failing to report the alleged rape and killings but is not accused of being a direct participant. He is not facing an Article 32 hearing at this time.

Green, who was discharged from the Army in May because of an "anti-social personality disorder," faces rape and murder charges in federal court.

The incident took place in March in Mahmoudiya, just south of Baghdad. A Justice Department affidavit filed in Green's case says Green and other soldiers planned the rape.

The affidavit says Green shot and killed a woman's relatives, including a girl of about 5 years of age, then raped the woman and fatally shot her. It says the incident took place "on or about March 12, 2006."

Identity cards and death certificates obtained by Reuters news agency suggest the rape-murder victim was 14 years old.

In his testimony, Kunk described his interrogations of Yribe, Barker and Green.

Kunk said he was first made aware of the incident after a telephone call from company commander Capt. John Goodwin on June 19. He testified that Goodwin informed him of the alleged murders and asked him for guidance.

Immediately after that phone call, Kunk said, he made plans to travel to Yusifiya, where Goodwin was stationed, to investigate the incident.

Kunk recalled interviewing Yribe, whom he described as the first coalition soldier to get to the scene of the killings. He described the sergeant as straightforward and said Yribe "said he didn't have any participation that day."

Kunk said Yribe showed him photographs of the scene that he said he took.

Kunk also recalled questioning Barker, whom he described as "very flippant, very confident, and more than willing to answer the questions I had."

"He said, 'No sir, no coalition soldier was responsible for the ... murder of that family and the rape and murder of that little girl,' " Kunk testified.

Kunk said Howard told him he did not know who was responsible for the crime, nor did he have any further knowledge.

None of the three soldiers asked for an attorney during the questioning, Kunk said.

During defense questioning about his platoon's morale and welfare, Kunk recalled Green saying that "all Iraqis are bad people."

"I told him that that wasn't true and that 90 to 95 percent of the Iraqi people are good people and they want the same thing that we have in the United States," Kunk said, recalling the conversation that took place sometime before Green was discharged from the Army.

Soldiers are quoted in the Justice Department affidavit as telling investigators that after the rape and slayings, Green and his companions set the family's house afire, threw the AK-47 rifle used in the killings into a nearby canal and burned their bloodstained clothing.

The identity cards and death certificates of the victims, obtained by Reuters, show that the alleged rape victim was Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, with the birthdate August 19, 1991. The mayor of Mahmoudiya confirmed her identity and birthdate to CNN.

The U.S. military had previously referred to the alleged rape victim as a "young Iraqi woman." A Justice Department affidavit in the case against Green says investigators estimated her age at about 25, while the U.S. military said she was 20.

All six of the soldiers are from the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Green is being held in a Kentucky jail and last month he was granted a three-month delay in his arraignment. He has pleaded not guilty.

Bullet-riddled bodies found
At least 15 people were killed and 17 were wounded Sunday when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a funeral procession in the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit, police said.

The incident occurred at 8 p.m. (1 p.m. ET) in the ancestral home of ousted President Saddam Hussein, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Baghdad.

The bomber blew himself up at a hall in the Qadisiyah neighborhood in central Tikrit, where people had gathered to mourn the death of the father of two men, one of them a provincial council member and the other a police officer.

The official said the suicide bomber left his car -- rigged with explosives -- outside the hall, but it did not explode. Bomb experts defused it.

Also Sunday, 12 bullet-riddled bodies showing signs of torture were found by Iraqi police in various Baghdad neighborhoods, according to Baghdad emergency police.

Police said they could not immediately identify the bodies.

Nine bodies turned up in similar discoveries a day earlier, Baghdad police said


http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/08/07/iraq.main/index.html

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

A 14 year old Iraqi girl's family is SHOT then she is raped AFTERWARDS and then SHOT.

US Soldiers. Freedom fighters.

Can this be excused as "a few bad apples"?

If we heard about this happening to a white girl in Seattle who goes to starbucks we'd be HORRIFIED. We can empathize more with a starbucks drinking white girl who goes to high school than a 14 year old Muslim girl who watches her family die then gets violated by 4 unknown white "freedom fighters".

Can you imagine the scene? Can you imagine feeling a penis inside you, being used grotesquely by a man who's smiling and grinning and fucking you and being aware that the body of your 5 year old little sister is bleeding all over the floor?

Can you imagine all this while 4 other guys grin and watch and cheer the other guy on?

Ignorant mother fuckers voted him back into office, right?

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

people are bad, amongst every type of people you have the stupid mothafuckers, they will get what they deserve one day, wat goes around comes around.

"I have nothing to be proud of today but hopefully tomorrow I will."

The right thing to do would be to turn those soldiers over to the Iraqi authority, even better al Sadre's militia, who we should have befriended long ago and left Iraq.

It is terrible. Recruiters are out there recruiting gang bangers to fulfill quotas for Iraq and this is what you get.

"A fool says I know and a wise man says I wonder."

Let me know if this is not the truth in every way:

Every dollar in tax you pay to the American Government contributes to the manufacturing of guns that were used to hold this girl down while she was gang banged. Every dollar in tax you pay to the American Government contributes to the flight these soldiers had to Iraq, and to the money that was paid to them for torturing and violating a 14 year old girl.

If that isn't state sponsored terrorism, I don't know what is.

And lets not fool ourselves by thinking this is an isolated event...

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

I don't know what dollars paid for this crime. Don't know if it was the dollars from China or Sadie Arabia that helped finance our debt or the dollars my son will pay to help pay off this debt, or maybe it was the dollars taken from social security. I really don't know what dollars paid for this.

American tax dollars pay for a lot of things, like aid to Iran twice after the last two earthquakes they have had.

Don't know how it works in Canada, but here, when you get a job, before you get paid your taxes are taken out and there is nothing you can do about it and you don't get to decide what your taxes pay for.

Without government there would be anarchy. In order to have a government there must be a defense to protect that government. Canada has a military, and that military has guns and your tax dollars pay for it.

No, it's not an isolated case, however, these soldiers were NOT ordered to rape this girl, it occurred while their sergeant was away, home on leave I understand without a replacement.

Nowhere in the battlefield manual are soldiers taught to rape women.

State sponsored terrorism would indicate that the voters and tax payers would approve of this, I doubt we will find that to be true.

The way I see it, there are only two people who are to blame for what happened to that girl. The soldiers who did this, and Bush, as Commander in Chief who sent them there.

"A fool says I know and a wise man says I wonder."

Negligence is not innocence. Give a soldier a gun, and he's going to shoot people, even if you don't tell him do. What a crock of shit.

Do you really believe that shit you just spewed? No one told them to rape her?

Do you have any idea how many shitty, semi-retarded metaphors I could come up with that would be identical to this in which case if we said "They weren't told to do it" you would want to beat me with a stick?

I know I'm just venting because I could go on and on about how assanine your last post was.

YOU contribute to the killing in Iraq by paying taxes. Don't try to disclaim yourself from the truth.

I (ME) contribute to the killing in Iraq by paying taxes to Canada, who is in bed with the US. However, I'm obviously MUCH less at fault than YOU are.

Americans voted Bush into office. They handed him power. He is their responsibility, his blame is their blame, the soldiers blame is his blame, the soldiers' blame is YOUR blame.

If Canadian soldiers were raping 14 year olds in another country, if we were killing people, I don't know what i'd be doing but I can tell you this, I would have to go slightly insane in order to give one dollar to the government.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

If a work colleague killed another colleague while at work; would the boss be fired and would the collegaues of that worker also be fired?

""No words""

Decius - if you want to take any blame for what happened in Iraq you are free to do so.

I have learned long ago that guilt and shame solves nothing except more hurt and pain.

I voted, but it wasn't for Bush, and I'll vote again in November, and I won't vote for anyone who supports this crap.

Venting is good, but throw those rocks at Bush, the one who created this mess.

Bette Midler says we should have impeached Bush yesterday. Throwing stones at Bette Midler and I because we are American tax payers doesn't help - throwing stones at Bush does.

Blaming the garbage man for the stink of garbage doesn't make it smell better.

"A fool says I know and a wise man says I wonder."

Again, all your metaphors are missplaced.

Coworkers may not have known about another coworker. The boss may not have known about the coworker. That's a ridiculous metaphor. If the boss knew, then of course he would be fired and probably never hired again.

The garbage man does not create the garbage, or condone the garbage. Terrible metaphor.

And who's telling you to feel guilty? You can't escape blame because you fear feeling guilty.

Feel responsible. Your words in this thread demonstrate that you do not claim responsibility. That you defend an army that permits soldiers to rape and kill iraqis but does not "order" them to.

This assanine perspective on negligence means that you have some biased reason to defend the army as a whole. Probably because you are a veteran.

Heyjme, I'm surprised you would make such a false point. A more valid metaphor would be this:

If coworkers and the boss knew that another coworker steals from work, and they still vote him to be employee of the month, and with that award comes access to the company vault, and this coworker steals all the company's money and it goes under and the coworkers and boss have to find new jobs, do you think they would kick themselves for not trying to get him fired?

They would blame themselves. Hence, it is their responsibility. Negligence is not an excuse.

If an a-bomb goes off in Texas do you think Texans won't blame themselves for voting Bush into power?

Any of the people who died in Katrina that voted bush into power... do you think they don't blame themselves?

Do you think any of these people don't try to educate themselves about Bush like madmen to compensate for the error in negligence they made in the past?

The only reasons Americans have not begun taking responsibility for raped and battered and murdered and gang-banged Muslim girls is because they have not suffered enough.

And they are too selfish to share in the suffering that they are causing.

Some Americans aren't... and they are going slightly insane just like I would. And it's an attrocity that the rest of Americans are putting people like that through this.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

Decius - you know I'm a veteran, and a man, and an american

So am I guilty for something someone else did?

"A fool says I know and a wise man says I wonder."

quote:

---

Heyjme, I'm surprised you would make such a false point. A more valid metaphor would be this:

If coworkers and the boss knew that another coworker steals from work, and they still vote him to be employee of the month, and with that award comes access to the company vault, and this coworker steals all the company's money and it goes under and the coworkers and boss have to find new jobs, do you think they would kick themselves for not trying to get him fired?

They would blame themselves. Hence, it is their responsibility. Negligence is not an excuse.

---

""No words""

The "line" you speak of that makes it an assumption or grey area is nowhere near where we stand today.

As you said, people must be knowledgeable about their actions and innactions.

A miniscule amount of open minded research clearly surpasses any possible "grey areas" and enters a very clear realm where you foresee that such attrocities will occur (because they ocurred in the past).

You foresee that the war is false (because similar wars ocurred in the past).

What you're suggesting is, as Bill Maher very wickedly put, a "wash". That means that you try to equate both sides in order to confuse the listener into thinking that there are equal arguments on both sides.

But there aren't. Americans have no excuse: They voted this into power, and must accept full responsibility unless they accept that they have the attention span and information gathering ability of dogs.

This isn't the Nazi era where propaganda can control populations.

Your largest fallacy is you denote the lack of information Americans have to innocence. That is far from the truth.

It is a choice. This point cannot be argued. The information is available everywhere there are books and everywhere there is the internet.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

I'm an American and I never voted for Bush - I'm not guilty. More and more evidence that Bush never even won the election.

One word for you Decius - Prejudice.

"A fool says I know and a wise man says I wonder."

I remember in an English class the teacher saying how stupid and foolish the German's were to let Hitler do what he did. To carry on knowing that deep down what they did was wrong.

But; there is a higher thing than this; and that is human compassion. If you kick a dog when its down its more likely to stay down.

People are products of their environments. Every will of every person strives to be happy. But without strength given to them somehow; they will not know how to find it themselves.

Some may think they know the truth; but knowledge is not enough. People need to know how to motivate; to above all have strength to be heard and to act.

I think you are right in principle Decuis, that war is wrong.

However, we should realise the nature of the enemy. I don't know why, ULTIMATELY, America is going to war. I'm sure that the reasons they tell us is rubbish. And 9/11 is very hard to justify. I dont know what the underlying causes are; probably only a select few do (maybe this excludes George Bush). But that reason could be good or bad for American's. And I'm guessing this is their fear.The first reaction is to protect onself, normally, and not principles. Sad as it may be; but I'm not a parent so its easier for me to think principles are worth so much.

The other point is similat to what Okcitykid has implied but not perhaps realised explicitly. And that is that in order for theirto be a change the people who want the change must do it while in America; while they have the right to do so. Leaving is perhaps the worst option.

If you want change; the collective have to stand up and rise against in the old fashioned sense. But this will take a leader; and a strong one. It wont happen of its own accord. And the nature of this leader must be absolute belief in the cause. Another case of blind faith.

My point is this; people realise 'truth' when they conclude something for themselves. If I say to someone apples go brown when left. It takes the fun out of thinking they discovered something for themself. If I say; some fruit go brown when left. And then give them an apple they realise apples are one of these fruit. A simple case but the principle is the same.

There was a diffferent kind of chimp found sometime ago, called a humanzee, I think they called him Eric. Basically it was thought a human had produced offspring with a chimpanzee. DNA reulsts showed he was a chimp but an evolved one. The point is that the other chimps rejected him. This is because he was too different; despite us thinking he was more evolved; indeed he seemed to be intelligent relative to a chimp; they rejected him.

In the UK David Icke went on a tv show and said lizards live amongst us and they change form. Just this was enough to make him a looney. Depsite having maybe some evidence which was hard-worked and in some cases what seems just; this ridiculed his whole work. This is extreme.

But the point is; go too far at atacking the prime beliefs of any person without doing it slowly and subtly and you will face hostility. No matter how good the intentions; the effects will not refelct.

What use is a loud resounding symbol if noone will listen?

All this isnt as neat, tidy or as objective as natural laws. But there are rulesof nature; of human nature to understand. The means by which to do good must be understood.

""No words""