Reply #39: Former US soldier convicted of Iraqi girl's murder could get death sentence

[Judi Lynn]

Former US soldier convicted of Iraqi girl's murder could get death sentence
Jury will decide on Monday if Steven Green will be put to death for rape and murder of 14-year-old girl

Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 May 2009 19.23 BST

A jury will reconvene on Monday to decide whether a former US soldier who they have convicted of raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her family should be sentenced to death.

Family and friends of Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, the girl who was attacked in a village outside Baghdad on 12 March 2006, have urged the panel to opt for the death penalty. "We Iraqis consider honour as a very sensitive and precious thing," Abeer's cousin Mahmoud Darwish Nasir told Associated Press.

~snip~
"This was a crime that was committed in cold blood," the lead prosecuting lawyer Marisa Ford said. The defence focused on the stress Green had been under, as several colleagues had been recently killed.

Extreme behaviour in the military context was also the subject of a separate civilian court ruling today when a US federal judge in Virginia placed on probation a military contractor who had executed a handcuffed prisoner in Afghanistan.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/08/iraq-usa