a sad sad story...
GI gets three years for killing Iraqi18:29 AEDT Sat Dec 11 2004
AP - A US soldier has been sentenced to three years prison after pleading guilty to killing a severely wounded Iraqi teenager.
Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne Jr, 30, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, also received a reduction in rank to private, forfeiture of wages and a dishonourable discharge.
Horne, attached to Company C, 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, based in Fort Riley, Kansas, pleaded guilty to one count of unpremeditated murder and another one count of soliciting another soldier to commit unpremeditated murder.
The charges relate to the August 18 killing of a 16-year-old Iraqi male found in a burning truck with severe abdominal wounds sustained during clashes in Baghdad's Sadr City, an impoverished neighbourhood which was the scene of fierce fighting between US forces and Shi'ite rebels loyal to anti-US cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
A criminal investigator had said during an earlier hearing that the soldiers decided to kill him to "put him out of his misery".
posted by leigh langtree @ 12/11/2004
1 comments
1 Comments:
Very sad indeed. Think of how bitter this soldier is going to be in three years, when he is turned loose. He volunteered for the military, to begin with - he didn't object when he was sent to war, he didn't desert when it turned out to be an ill-conceived and poorly planned misadventure by the Pentagon, and when confronted with a mortally wounded person with no reasonable chance of survival, he put that person out of his misery, rather than watch him bleed to death. He did what any compassionate person would do under those circumstances. And what did it get him? Prison and a dishonorable discharge. Thanks a lot, court martial officials!! Keep the feel-good stories coming!!
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