Posted on 06/16/2005 4:06:37 PM PDT by saquin
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. Army staff sergeant was charged with murdering his two commanding officers last week at a base outside Baghdad, the military said Thursday in what is believed to be the first case of an American soldier in Iraq accused of killing his superiors.
Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez, 37, a supply specialist with the Headquarters and Headquarters Company of the 42nd Infantry Division, New York Army National Guard, was charged Wednesday in connection with the June 7 deaths of the two officers at Forward Operating Base Danger, near Tikrit — Saddam Hussein's hometown 80 miles north of Baghdad.
The officers killed in what was believed to be a "fragging" incident were Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, 30, of Suffern, N.Y., and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, 34, of Milford, Pa. Esposito was company commander and Allen, a father of four, served as a company operations officer.
Fragging is a term used to refer to soldiers killing their superiors.
The commanders were killed in what the military first believed was an "indirect fire" attack on the base. An indirect fire attack involves enemy artillery or mortar rounds fired from a location some distance away.
The military first concluded that a mortar round struck a window on the side of the building where Esposito and Allen were.
But a criminal investigation was launched after it was determined that the "blast pattern" at the scene was inconsistent with a mortar attack.
Martinez, of Troy, N.Y., is believed to have used some kind of explosive device, possibly a grenade, military officials said on condition of anonymity because the matter was still under investigation.
Martinez was charged with two counts of premeditated murder, said a statement by the Multinational Task Force in Iraq. Martinez currently is at a military detention facility in Kuwait.
His motive was unclear.
Martinez, who joined the New York Army National Guard in December 1990, deployed to Iraq in May 2004. He has been assigned a military attorney and has the option of hiring a civilian lawyer.
"Staff Sgt. Martinez has been and will continue to be afforded the extensive rights under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice," military spokesman Col. Billy J. Buckner said, according to the statement.
U.S. military officials contacted by The Associated Press in Iraq declined to comment further.
The 42nd Infantry Division took over from the 1st Infantry Division in January and is responsible for a vast section of northern and central Iraq.
Allen was a science teacher at Tuxedo High School in Orange County, N.Y., and was deployed to Iraq just a few weeks ago. He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and four sons, ages 1 to 6.
This is at least the second incident in which a U.S. soldier has been charged with killing his comrades in Iraq. In April, a sergeant in the Army's 101st Airborne Division was convicted of murder and attempted murder for a grenade and rifle attack that killed two officers and wounded 14 soldiers in Kuwait during the opening days of the Iraq invasion in 2003.
Hasan Akbar, a 34-year-old Muslim who was sentenced to death, had told investigators he staged the attack because he was upset that American troops would kill fellow Muslims.
[Warning: Gratuitous Vietnam references follow]
Fragging entered the American lexicon in the Vietnam War.
Such incidents increased late in the 1960s as the strains grew on a draftee army waging an unpopular war. Young men feeling hassled or unnecessarily put in harm's way by their commanders settled their grievances with a fragmentation grenade or a bullet in the back.
Between 1969 and 1971, the Army reported 600 fragging incidents that killed 82 Americans and injured 651. In 1971 alone, there were 1.8 fraggings for every 1,000 American soldiers serving in Vietnam, not including gun and knife assaults.
As President Nixon drew down U.S. forces, troops felt they were fighting a lost cause they were unwilling to die for.
The MSM really wants to re-live their glory days of Vietnam and Watergate -- they'll try to make any story fit one of those templates.
These murders are shocking -- I'm glad they seem to have caught the perp. If guilty I'm sure he'll get the death penalty for this, and rightly so.
What about that black Muslim soldier from last year, who also staged a grenade attack?
They do mention the Akbar case in the article. But that happened in Kuwait before the war so I guess this is the first one in Iraq.
So I guess the AP is expecting more?
Was this in response to those nutty war protester signs that read, "We Support Our Troops When They Shoot Their Officers?"
It is safer to be one of the troops in Iraq than to live in DC. No joke.
Bingo. Where do they get off deciding that Akbar shouldn't be considered fragging. Typical AP trying to rewrite history on the fly.
Oh, that's nothin'. You should have heard the reporter on CBS news tonight ending his report by intoning "If this kind of thing continues to occur it could be an ominous sign of low morale among the troops in Iraq".
Yeah, and if I had wings I could fly.
I agree that if something like this was happening on a regular basis it would be a bad sign. But we've been in Iraq over 2 years. This is the first and only time this has happened in Iraq. (The previous one, 2+ years ago, was in Kuwait and was obviously perpetrated by a mentally unbalanced Muslim soldier who hated America). This is obviously an isolated case. There will always be mentally unbalanced people in any large group. To extrapolate from this and spout drivel like "IF this continues to happen it would be an ominous sign of low morale" is not reporting. It's biased editorializing unsupported by the facts. One more nail in the coffin of the MSM.
Wonder where author gets his outrageous stats about fraggings in Vietnam?
Thank you for posting this. Our local anti-war rag the Times Herald Record was already bashing the army for, get ready for this, "dragging out this investigation".
"Wonder where author gets his outrageous stats about fraggings in Vietnam?"
I agree. Maybe from some anti-war group, no doubt
(which means, the info is a bit hyped. . .)
Wonder where author gets his outrageous stats about fraggings in Vietnam?
I was "in country" from Aug 1970 to Aug 1971. During that time I was in four different units due to the drawdown and never had the right amount of time left for a "drop" to leave early. In those four units two of them were in the boonies for a total time of about 8 months. In those 8 months there was one fragging incident and all it resulted in was a loss of sandbags around the bunker the unit commander lived in. The fragger was caught and went away, no idea what happened to him.
In the four months that I was a base camp warrior, we had one atempted incident where a medic tried to frag the unit surgeon. Again he got caught and if memory is correct he went to Leavenworth for a long time.
Wonder where author gets his outrageous stats about fraggings in Vietnam?
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