U.S. Soldier Sentenced for
Killing Iraqi
ABC News/AP
BAGHDAD, Iraq Dec 11, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq Dec 11, 2004 — A U.S. soldier was
sentenced to three years in prison for killing a severely wounded
Iraqi teenager, the military said Saturday, while insurgents
staged attacks in several cities, killing at least 10 Iraqis,
including a police colonel, two Shiite clerics and a judge.
Six American soldiers also were wounded in separate attacks in
northern Iraq.
Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne Jr., 30, of Wilson, N.C., pleaded
guilty on Friday to one count of unpremeditated murder and one
count of soliciting another soldier to commit unpremeditated
murder.
His sentencing included a reduction in rank to private,
forfeiture of wages and a dishonorable discharge.
The charges relate to the Aug. 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
neighborhood that was the scene of fierce fighting between U.S.
forces and Shiite rebels loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada
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."
A jury-like panel of seven service members late Friday
sentenced Horne who is attached to Company C, 1st Battalion, 41st
Infantry Regiment, based in Fort Riley, Kan. after about four
hours of deliberations, the military said on Saturday.
Deadly ambushes, suicide car bombings and roadside bomb blasts
took place across the country, killing at least 10 Iraqis and
wounding six U.S. soldiers.
U.S. soldiers were ambushed late Friday in Ramadi, a hotbed of
anti-American violence 70 miles west of Baghdad, by insurgents
firing rocket propelled grenades and small arms from the city's
hospital and medical academy, the Marines claimed in a statement
Saturday.
Insurgents hid inside the Ramadi General Hospital and Medical
College and in nearby areas waiting for the soldiers to move into
their ambush zone, said Capt. Bradley Gordon, spokesman for the
1st Marine Division of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
"Some of the muzzle flashes of insurgent firing positions were
observed as originating from windows within the hospital," he
said.
Officials from both the Ramadi General Hospital and Medical
College, rejected the U.S. claims that they were used in the
ambush, but said fighting occurred nearby.
Two Iraqi civilians, including judge Omar Abdul Aziz Rashid,
were killed during fighting, but no U.S. casualties were
reported.
"It was very hard to identify my husband's body, because it
was charred inside the car," the judge's wife, Dr. Eman Abdul
Qadre, said.
Separately, police on Saturday found seven bodies apparently
killed several days ago and dumped near a highway about 20 miles
west of Ramadi.
Lt. Col. Ziyad al-Jubouri said the seven were dark-skinned and
didn't look Iraqi, while a hospital official said two Sudanese
men asked about the bodies at the morgue. The Sudanese Embassy
said it has heard of the grisly finds and sent an official to
investigate.
U.S. forces also blew up a large cache of confiscated weapons
in the Sofia suburb of Ramadi late Friday.
Militants, who are predominantly from Iraq's Sunni Muslim
minority, also continued their attacks against Iraqi security
forces and members of the country's majority Shiite
community.
Gunmen also killed two Iraqi police, including a colonel, in
an ambush north of Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, on
Saturday, killing one of each as they traveled to work, U.S.
military spokesman Maj. Neal O'Brien said.
Another two police officers were killed, including one
captain, and two more wounded by militants while patrolling
Baghdad's northern Azamiyah suburb late Friday, police Lt.
Mohammed al-Obeidi said.
In the nearby Shula neighborhood, Shiite cleric Salim
al-Yaqoubi was killed by gunmen near his house early Saturday, a
police spokesman said.
A second Shiite cleric, Sheik Ammar al-Jibouri, was slain on
Friday near Mahmoudiya, about 25 miles south of Baghdad, as he
was driving to the capital. Al-Jiborui once headed a religious
court of followers of anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al- Sadr in the
southern holy city of Najaf.
Al-Sadr aide Sheik Ali Smesim said al-Jibouri's killing was
aimed at "flaring a sectarian war between Iraqis."
In the central Iraqi city of Samarra, a mortar shell slammed
into a car, killing one occupant and injuring another, U.S.
military spokesman Master Sgt. Robert Powell said. The attack
happened late Friday near a river ferry terminal and a mile from
a U.S. military base.
In northern Iraq, a suspected suicide car bomber wounded two
U.S. soldiers in Beiji, 155 miles north of Baghdad, while two
more were wounded in a car bomb blast near Kirkuk, about 60 miles
to the north.
Two more U.S. soldiers were wounded by a roadside bomb outside
of Hawija, near Kirkuk.
Elsewhere, a car bomb in Mosul exploded near a U.S. military
convoy, killing a civilian but causing no American casualties,
witnesses said.
Horne was among six Fort Riley soldiers charged with killings
in recent months two for slayings in Kansas and four for deaths
in Iraq. Staff Sgt. Cardenas J. Alban, 29, of Inglewood, Calif.,
is charged along with Horne in the teenager's killing and is
awaiting a court-martial hearing.
Two other soldiers from the same unit this week faced Article
32 hearings the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing over
a Sadr City killing in August.
Human rights groups have condemned the illegal killings of
Iraqis either civilians or wounded fighters by the U.S. military,
saying such acts amount to violations of international
humanitarian rights and should be dealt with as war crimes.
Critics also say poor understanding by young U.S. troops of
the rules of military engagement leads to the killing of
civilians.
"It doesn't help you win the hearts and minds of the public if
you put a bullet in their hearts and another in the minds," said
Mark Garlasco, senior military analyst for Human Rights
Watch.
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