Officers Describe Kuwait Grenade Attack (Akbar on trial)

Yahoo! News / AP ^ | 6.17.03 | KIMBERLY HEFLING

[mhking]

FORT KNOX, Ky. - Taking the witness stand three months after he was injured in a grenade attack in Kuwait, Capt. Terence Bacon said he remembered hearing screaming and seeing blood.

Bacon, who suffered shrapnel injuries to both knees and hearing loss during the attack, recalled the carnage during a military hearing convened for the alleged assailant, fellow soldier Sgt. Hasan K. Akbar.

"It was kind of an ugly scene there," Bacon said.

Akbar, 32, of the 101st Airborne Division's 326th Engineer Battalion, is accused of killing two officers and injuring 14 others in the March 23 attack. Testimony began Monday and was to continue Tuesday.

The purpose of the Article 32 hearing, similar to a civilian grand jury proceeding, is to determine whether Akbar should be court-martialed. He could face the death penalty if convicted on two counts of premeditated murder and three counts of attempted murder.

The attack on officers in three tents from the Fort Campbell-based division's 1st Brigade happened days before the brigade was scheduled to move into Iraq (news - web sites). Army Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert, 27, of Easton, Pa., and Air Force Maj. Gregory Stone, 40, of Boise, Idaho, were killed.

Maj. Verner Kiernan, testified that Akbar was the last noncommissioned officer who had been guarding a cache of grenades and that four of them were unaccounted for after the attack.

Kiernan said he had heard an explosion and a commotion, then saw a black man in desert camouflage at the entrance of his tent. Akbar is black.

"We're under attack, sir," Kiernan recalled the man saying.

A second or two later, Kiernan testified, he heard something roll across the plywood floor of the tent. Then another explosion.

Under cross-examination from Akbar's lawyers, Sgt. 1st Class Patricia Ann Lewis, the brigade's equal opportunity adviser, said there have been cases of Muslim soldiers' complaining about being treated unfairly.

Akbar, who is Muslim, had told family members he was wary of going to war in Iraq. His mother, Quran Bilal, said after the attack she was concerned he might have been accused because he is a Muslim.

Prosecutors expect to call a total of 39 witnesses for the hearing, with 23 of them testifying over a video link from Mosul, Iraq.

The Army has not suggested a possible motive in the attack. But George Heath, a Fort Campbell spokesman, said soon after the attack that Akbar had "an attitude problem."

Akbar's case marks the first time since the Vietnam War that a soldier in the U.S. Army has been prosecuted for the murder or attempted murder of another soldier during a period of war, said Maj. Steve Stover, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon

[cweese]

...just curious, how does the army administer the death penalty? firing squad?...

[stuartcr]

Never happen

[SAJ]

Naah. They haul you into the mess, then just keep serving chipped beef on toast until your bod can't take it any more.

[iceskater]

I've been reading Steven Emerson's American Jihad. In it, he talks about some terrorist thugs who had joined our military and learned how we deal with various situations, etc. When I heard about this incident, that was all I could think about. That this guy is another AQ agent.