US officer guilty of Iraqi death

[Eugene]

(BBC News)

Last Updated: Sunday, 22 January 2006, 06:48 GMT

US officer guilty of Iraqi death

A US officer has been found guilty of the negligent homicide of an Iraqi general who was being held
in custody.

But a jury of six army officers found Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr not guilty of
the murder of Maj-Gen Abed Hamed Mowhoush in 2003.

The officer now faces up to three years in jail for homicide. He was also convicted of dereliction
of duty.

Prosecutors say Gen Mowhoush was bound, placed headfirst in a sleeping bag and died with an officer
sitting on him.

<snip>

Full article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4636344.stm

[daleo]

1. Hilarious

"...bound, placed headfirst in a sleeping bag and died with an officer
sitting on him."

But that's not murder.

[varkam]

2. No, that's a uh...stress position. Yeah, that's it.

And waterboarding is not torture.

[Richard Steele]

3. "negligent homocide"?

He beat this guy for hours, and then stuffed him into a bag
and SAT on him until he stopped breathing!
But it wasnt MURDER, oh no...
he was just "negligent".

So, by this standard, what MURDERER wasn't 'negligent'?
If I spend 8 hours of my life hitting someone 230 times with a baseball bat,
and that person DIES...
I'm not a brutal, sadistic 'murderder'...
I'm just "negligent", because I FAILED to stop beating him before I caused fatal injury!

OOOPS! MY bad, yer honor!
Mistakes were made!
I blame myself!

"I didn't mean to kill him, I just didn't STOP
breaking every bone in his body soon enough!"

insert PUKE smiley HERE:

[Moochy]

14. You got it

Negligent because if he'd been trained in torture, he'd have held off and used techniques that would have kept him alive. :eyes:

So, if a bomber pilot accidentally drops their payload on a civilian target because they accidentally hit the bomb release, is that negligent homicide?

What makes one act more punishable is the unseemly, and grisly face it puts on the conflict. If someone is intentionally bombing civilians against orders, then sure they'll be brought up for trial, but its just an illustrative point about the way war is sanitized through the use of technology. The sanitization removes the possiblity that the pilot will be brought up for charges, and yet the grunt who dealt directly with the enemy is punished. I'm not arguing of the moral equivalence, just the end result is that in both cases people die, needlessly.

What he should have been brought up for, is failure to torture correctly. :( But the standards for handling prisoners seem to have gone out the window, and the from the interviews with soldiers and marines over there for some, the revenge factor is a primary motivator. Many of their friends have died and been horribly injured, and it affects them greatly. I have no crystal ball to see into the hearts and minds of the soldiers, but I all of them with a shred of humanity left, know the difference between torturing a prisoner, and shooting an armed fedayeen, or insurgent. And even I can see the moral argument on which they base this claim. Shooting a hostile target is about self-preservation at the squad level, and the torture is motivated by a misguided intent to extract information. Ie. still motivated by self-preservation, the intelligence he thought he was going to get could have helped out other units.

And yet, if only the officer could have found a young relative of the general, he could have called a mercenary/cia asset over to rape him/her in front of the general. Then maybe he wouldnt have made the mistake of sitting on him... :(

[HuffleClaw]

4. "The officer now faces up to three years in jail for homicide."

thats it? for KILLING a guy? hmmm. you suppose if a bouncer at a bar sat on a guy to subdue him while waiting for police and the guy died he'd get only three years? not bloody likely. and what is worse is that the ones truly responsible for these horrors are walking free, the ones who approved and ordered such techniques to be used.

[atreides1]

5. "...the ones who approved and ordered..."

Unfortunately the orders we're not written, and judging by the one e-mail that this "officer" sent
to his superiors that the prosecution used, he was all for "using new techniques" without being told to do so.

No, I think in this case, this man did what he did all on his own!!!

[Army]

6. Too Bad

He couldn't find an enlisted soldier to blame it on. You can bet your ass the awfulcers tried to.

[Warren Stupidity]

17. Yup.

It seems that they were fresh out of 'em on this occasion. Prob'ly due to the high rank of the victim.

Welcome to DU.

[Warren Stupidity]

9. The specific technique might have been on his own,

but I rather doubt he was off torturing detainees on his own initiative without orders to do so.

[saigon68]

7. 3 Years for killing some one --- WOW

You would get that for writing a bad check here

[Warren Stupidity]

8. You could get 9-12 for chili finger fraud, for example. nt.

[qazplm]

11. that was excessive

to say the least. They each should have gotten a year at most IMO.

[qazplm]

10. I'm sure I will be slammed

but from a purely legal view and speaking as a defense attorney, you have to prove intent to get murder, if he didnt actually intend to kill the guy but just torture him, and the guy dies, then something less than murder is the appropriate legal decision, may not be the appropriate moral or even the correct decision, but its the appropriate legal decision if the jury believes he didnt intend to kill him.

Once you get there, then you get the maximums outlined for negligent homicide. The military criminal justice system actually has some better things then the civil system, and is more defense friendly in some areas overall, although military panels tend to sentence heavier, they are also harder to convince of guilt.

All I'm saying is these kind of results are typical of a military panel, and arent a bunch of bloodthirsty killers on the panel who dont care that an Iraqi General was killed.

[Warren Stupidity]

13. Oh please.

He beat the guy senseless and stuffed him in a sleeping bag with his head covered. Manslaughter perhaps - that would be the lack of specific intent to kill, but he intended to cause serious bodily harm, which is all you need for a murder conviction. Negligent homicide is bullshit.

[qazplm]

15. intent to cause serious bodily harm

is not "all you need" for a murder conviction.

manslaughter requires either "heat of sudden passion" or culpable negligence under Article 119 of the UCMJ. There would be none of the first here, so you would either need to find culpable negligence OR be squarely in the murder Article 118 zone or under Article 134 negligent homicide.

Since we dont know what evidence was presented, nor do we know how capable the prosecutors/trial counsel were (and another feature of the military criminal justice system is that the prosecutors are often less experienced than the defense counsel), it is entirely possible that the government was unable to prove:

a. specific intent to kill
b. culpable negligence

It's interesting to note that we all had no problem with the OJ verdict given the evidence the jury had to consider (even though most of us believed him guilty) but now, its "bullshit" because we dont agree with the verdict? It's our justice system at work, with rules of evidence that sometimes exclude pro-government evidence, defense attorneys who can outmaneuver the prosecution, and juries who operate on a beyond reasonable doubt standard.

[Warren Stupidity]

16. huh?

"It's interesting to note that we all had no problem with the OJ verdict" I thought the verdict was bullshit, although perhaps excusible given that lying sack of shit policeman they put on the stand.

This verdict is bullshit to most of us because we know damn well that in any other circumstance beating the crap out of somebody and stuffing him in a sleeping bag and having him die of SUFFOCATION would bring a murder verdict.

[qazplm]

18. then you didnt watch the OJ trial

because the evidence the jury had was much different than the evidence that wasnt let in or you wouldnt call it "bullshit". Incorrect perhaps, but not bullshit.

You outline the "facts" without knowing if in fact they were "the facts" OR if they were "the facts" that were admitted to the jury.

I dont have a problem with you being unhappy with the end result, or think the guy gets away with too light of a sentence, but sorry it is not "bullshit", everyone in that trial did their best, I KNOW the military justice system and for the most part prosecutors go hard after misconduct, defense attorneys go hard to get their guy off, and judges try to make the right decisions as do juries.

It doesnt become less valid just because its military people involved.

[Moochy]

12. Kill Kill Kill! Stop!

"Oh wait not that way.. bad killer!" *smacks killers hand with a ruler*.

Mixed messages? There is a difference to the killer, between varying methods of smothering a person to death. Dropping a bomb on an apartment building that collapses the ceiling to the floor, which smothers women and children in sleeping bags...

Push a button & drop a bomb, or sit on them as part of torture. The end result is the same. Less people on earth. The more technological artifact that the Pentagon gives our fighting men and women, the more remote the event seems, and it becomes easier to rationalize the killing. What defines cruelty in a time of war? Clearly the Chief Warrant Officer started on a task that was expected and went too far, possibly because he lacked the specialized torture training.

I'm only commenting on the tragic irony of the situation. It's important to have these trials in a time of war, and to call these so-called "bad apples" to justice, but to me, the bigger issue is the hypocrisy of it all.