Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
October 29, 2008
Pg. 12
By Alissa J. Rubin
BAGHDAD — An Iraqi criminal court on Tuesday sentenced a man to death for the abduction, torture and murder of three young American soldiers on June 16, 2006, but acquitted his [FONT=Times New Roman, Times]two[/FONT] co-defendants. It was the first case in which an Iraqi court tried and convicted an Iraqi in the murder of an American.
The court found that the man, Ibrahim Karim al-Qaraghuli, 29, was part of a gang of militants operating in an area just south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death. He appears to have been the driver of one of the vehicles that was used in the soldiers’ abduction and torture.
“It was a good, solid defensible decision,” said Col. Rafael Lara, a judge advocate who now leads the Law and Order Task Force, the American group that has worked with the Iraqis to help to revive their court system and bring forensics expertise.
“We would have liked to see all three defendants convicted,” he said.
The case provided a window both into the working of militant groups in one of the most troubled areas of Iraq and the nascent acceptance of forensic evidence by the Iraqi courts. The critical difference in the cases against the three defendants was that there was conclusive forensic evidence — fingerprints and a handprint — against the one who was convicted while there was no forensic evidence presented in court against the others.
All three were implicated by witness statements, but some of the statements were vague.
Specialist David Babineau, 25, Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, and Pfc. Thomas Tucker, 25, of the First Battalion, 502nd Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division, were attacked by insurgents as they sat in their Humvee under a bridge near the Euphrates River.
The attack was one chapter in a brutal history of this army unit. Just four months earlier, American soldiers from the same unit raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and then killed her, her parents and sister, burning the bodies afterward.
Four soldiers were convicted and sentenced in the rape case and a fifth soldier was discharged from the military. A sixth had already left the military when the others were court-martialed; he is scheduled to be tried in federal court.
None of the soldiers captured and killed on June 16 were among those implicated in the rape and murder case.
The Mujahedeen Shura Council, a militant Sunni group affiliated with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence says is led by foreigners, claimed responsibility for the attack in a gruesome video. They said it was revenge for the rape and murder of the girl and her family.
The area where the attack occurred was notorious for the presence of some of the most brutal cells of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The area, made up of small market towns — Mahmudiya, Latifiya and Yusufiya — surrounded by farmland, is crisscrossed by irrigation canals, which were one of several places where militants would routinely dump victims’ bodies.
Starting in late 2004, kidnappings, killings and beheadings became common in the area. Spanish intelligence officers were killed there and a journalist for a French television station was kidnapped there. Hundreds of Shiites were seized, some shot to death, some beheaded, their bodies dumped where they would be found by the police or the American military and serve as a warning to others considering travel through the area.
On June 16, the three soldiers in a Humvee were left to guard a movable bridge. Although generally American Humvees travel in pairs, these three soldiers appear to have been assigned to guard duty alone. The rest of their company was stationed at least a mile or two away. A subsequent investigation resulted in reprimands for some of their commanding officers.
A group of militants — one witness described as many as 40 to 50 people — besieged the Humvee. Specialist Babineau was killed in the initial gunfight. Privates Menchaca and Tucker survived the onslaught, but were tortured to death over the next few hours. They were beaten and stabbed, and at least one of them was tied to the back of the pickup truck used in the attack and dragged. Private Tucker was beheaded and Private Menchaca’s throat was slit, according to accounts at the trial and to lawyers close to the case.
The chief judge, Munther Raouf Haadi, sentenced Mr. Qaraghuli to hang, but said there was a lack of evidence in the cases of the other two defendants. In a pattern typical of terrorism cases, none of the witnesses appeared in court, but only gave sworn statements.
The judges questioned the five Iraqi forensics experts closely, asking each to testify after swearing on the Koran. The chief judge sounded doubtful at first about the validity of the fingerprint evidence, which was taken initially by the Americans who discovered the truck used in the abduction. They found the bloody handprints and fingerprints of Mr. Qaraghuli on the dashboard and door on the driver’s side. Iraqi forensics experts then reproduced the evidence and did their own comparisons of those prints with Mr. Qaraghuli’s.
There was also DNA evidence, according to lawyers close to the case, but the judges did not rely on that. Iraqis do not yet have the technology or expertise to gather and analyze DNA evidence themselves.
“Courts can only accept the evidence they are comfortable with,” Colonel Lara said. “The use of forensic evidence in the Iraqi system is new.”
Also on Tuesday, Iraq’s cabinet asked Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to present the United States with a set of amendments to the draft security agreement under discussion by the two countries, said Ali al-Dabbagh, the government’s spokesman. Details of the proposed amendments have not been made public.
The pact sets out the conditions for a continued American troop presence in Iraq after Dec. 31, when the United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing their presence expires.
The Iraqi government also took a somewhat sharper tone toward the United States in public comments on Tuesday on an American helicopter strike near the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal that Syria claims killed eight civilians. Syria’s cabinet closed both the American school and the American cultural center in Damascus on Tuesday in retaliation for the attack.
American officials have said that American helicopters were pursuing a known Iraqi militant, Abu Ghadiyah, who was planning an attack in Iraq, and that those killed were all militants.
In Mosul, four new police recruits were killed and four others wounded when gunmen opened fire on a bus the recruits were traveling in, a provincial security official said. The killings follow three assassinations in Mosul on Tuesday.
The city has become the center of a power struggle [FONT=Times New Roman, Times]between[/FONT] the Shiite-led central government and the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north. Violence has escalated in recent months.
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times]Katherine Zoepf and Tariq Maher contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Mosul.[/FONT]
October 29, 2008
Pg. 12
By Alissa J. Rubin
BAGHDAD — An Iraqi criminal court on Tuesday sentenced a man to death for the abduction, torture and murder of three young American soldiers on June 16, 2006, but acquitted his [FONT=Times New Roman, Times]two[/FONT] co-defendants. It was the first case in which an Iraqi court tried and convicted an Iraqi in the murder of an American.
The court found that the man, Ibrahim Karim al-Qaraghuli, 29, was part of a gang of militants operating in an area just south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death. He appears to have been the driver of one of the vehicles that was used in the soldiers’ abduction and torture.
“It was a good, solid defensible decision,” said Col. Rafael Lara, a judge advocate who now leads the Law and Order Task Force, the American group that has worked with the Iraqis to help to revive their court system and bring forensics expertise.
“We would have liked to see all three defendants convicted,” he said.
The case provided a window both into the working of militant groups in one of the most troubled areas of Iraq and the nascent acceptance of forensic evidence by the Iraqi courts. The critical difference in the cases against the three defendants was that there was conclusive forensic evidence — fingerprints and a handprint — against the one who was convicted while there was no forensic evidence presented in court against the others.
All three were implicated by witness statements, but some of the statements were vague.
Specialist David Babineau, 25, Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, and Pfc. Thomas Tucker, 25, of the First Battalion, 502nd Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division, were attacked by insurgents as they sat in their Humvee under a bridge near the Euphrates River.
The attack was one chapter in a brutal history of this army unit. Just four months earlier, American soldiers from the same unit raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and then killed her, her parents and sister, burning the bodies afterward.
Four soldiers were convicted and sentenced in the rape case and a fifth soldier was discharged from the military. A sixth had already left the military when the others were court-martialed; he is scheduled to be tried in federal court.
None of the soldiers captured and killed on June 16 were among those implicated in the rape and murder case.
The Mujahedeen Shura Council, a militant Sunni group affiliated with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a homegrown Sunni extremist group that American intelligence says is led by foreigners, claimed responsibility for the attack in a gruesome video. They said it was revenge for the rape and murder of the girl and her family.
The area where the attack occurred was notorious for the presence of some of the most brutal cells of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The area, made up of small market towns — Mahmudiya, Latifiya and Yusufiya — surrounded by farmland, is crisscrossed by irrigation canals, which were one of several places where militants would routinely dump victims’ bodies.
Starting in late 2004, kidnappings, killings and beheadings became common in the area. Spanish intelligence officers were killed there and a journalist for a French television station was kidnapped there. Hundreds of Shiites were seized, some shot to death, some beheaded, their bodies dumped where they would be found by the police or the American military and serve as a warning to others considering travel through the area.
On June 16, the three soldiers in a Humvee were left to guard a movable bridge. Although generally American Humvees travel in pairs, these three soldiers appear to have been assigned to guard duty alone. The rest of their company was stationed at least a mile or two away. A subsequent investigation resulted in reprimands for some of their commanding officers.
A group of militants — one witness described as many as 40 to 50 people — besieged the Humvee. Specialist Babineau was killed in the initial gunfight. Privates Menchaca and Tucker survived the onslaught, but were tortured to death over the next few hours. They were beaten and stabbed, and at least one of them was tied to the back of the pickup truck used in the attack and dragged. Private Tucker was beheaded and Private Menchaca’s throat was slit, according to accounts at the trial and to lawyers close to the case.
The chief judge, Munther Raouf Haadi, sentenced Mr. Qaraghuli to hang, but said there was a lack of evidence in the cases of the other two defendants. In a pattern typical of terrorism cases, none of the witnesses appeared in court, but only gave sworn statements.
The judges questioned the five Iraqi forensics experts closely, asking each to testify after swearing on the Koran. The chief judge sounded doubtful at first about the validity of the fingerprint evidence, which was taken initially by the Americans who discovered the truck used in the abduction. They found the bloody handprints and fingerprints of Mr. Qaraghuli on the dashboard and door on the driver’s side. Iraqi forensics experts then reproduced the evidence and did their own comparisons of those prints with Mr. Qaraghuli’s.
There was also DNA evidence, according to lawyers close to the case, but the judges did not rely on that. Iraqis do not yet have the technology or expertise to gather and analyze DNA evidence themselves.
“Courts can only accept the evidence they are comfortable with,” Colonel Lara said. “The use of forensic evidence in the Iraqi system is new.”
Also on Tuesday, Iraq’s cabinet asked Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to present the United States with a set of amendments to the draft security agreement under discussion by the two countries, said Ali al-Dabbagh, the government’s spokesman. Details of the proposed amendments have not been made public.
The pact sets out the conditions for a continued American troop presence in Iraq after Dec. 31, when the United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing their presence expires.
The Iraqi government also took a somewhat sharper tone toward the United States in public comments on Tuesday on an American helicopter strike near the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal that Syria claims killed eight civilians. Syria’s cabinet closed both the American school and the American cultural center in Damascus on Tuesday in retaliation for the attack.
American officials have said that American helicopters were pursuing a known Iraqi militant, Abu Ghadiyah, who was planning an attack in Iraq, and that those killed were all militants.
In Mosul, four new police recruits were killed and four others wounded when gunmen opened fire on a bus the recruits were traveling in, a provincial security official said. The killings follow three assassinations in Mosul on Tuesday.
The city has become the center of a power struggle [FONT=Times New Roman, Times]between[/FONT] the Shiite-led central government and the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north. Violence has escalated in recent months.
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times]Katherine Zoepf and Tariq Maher contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Mosul.[/FONT]