Posted on 07/16/2006 2:42:05 PM PDT by MizSterious
By RYAN LENZ, Associated Press Writer
U.S. military officials fear that religious hurdles in exhuming the body of a teenager could complicate the prosecution of American soldiers accused of raping and murdering the girl and create a political nightmare for the U.S. mission here.
Given the gravity of the allegations, U.S. officials believe that a vigorous prosecution is essential and that punishment should be severe if the six servicemen and one former soldier are convicted.
Anything short of that would be seen by Iraqis as a cover up and could shatter remaining support for the U.S. presence here.
Five soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division are accused of raping and murdering Abeer al-Janabi near the town of Mahmoudiya on March 12. A sixth soldier is accused of failing to report the crime.
The soldiers allegedly saw the victim at a checkpoint in the town and plotted the attack for a week, according to federal court documents. Three of her family members were killed in the assault.
But the victim's male relatives have refused to allow her body to be exhumed because of objections from a Muslim cleric. Islamic law frowns on exhumations as desecration of the dead.
"Chief among our concerns is carrying out justice. But when you get town officials or an imam saying that exhuming the body doesn't jive with our cultural sensitivities, that creates a massive stumbling block," a U.S. military official in Baghdad close to the investigation said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to media.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I'm sure they did. The difference here is that a request is made to the family to give permission. In other cases no such requests are made, except possibly to the authorities which gave permission.
There are confessions. I want them to have a fair trial and a fast hanging.
I do seem to think they are guilty and deserve hanging. I would let the Iraqis do it. It is a heinous crime and more Americans will die because of it and that makes me very, very angry.
Yep, and I am disgusted with those trying to defend them here at all costs, including legal technicalities, while decent American heroes are going to die because of it, just disgusted.
Presumably the guys were arrested. There's even a picture of one of them showing up at a courthouse.
On the other hand, that "document" or "affidavit" was prepared by an FBI agent who is otherwise well-known under a DIFFERENT NAME!
This leads many quite rational folks to suspect that the "document" or "affidavit" is spurious, or a forgery based on partial information from other sources. After all, the FBI agent's name is misspeled in both the handwritten and typed versions!
I'd said initially that this case will depend entirely on whether or not the Iraqis allow the bodies (not just the girl's body, but the whole family) to be exhumed and examined.
At the moment the Iranian controllers behind the Iraqi "witnesses" and "family" are busy trying to pull their chestnuts out of the fire in Israel, so they can't be bothered with this and the story has dropped out of sight.
What I'd like to know is why that "affidavit" has the preparer's name misspelled. I thought the FBI was on top of that kind of stuff lately.
No one has admitted anything in anything like a signed, sworn and witnessed confession available for public review.
We don't eally know about Green. Sounds like he might well have been run out of the army by some guys who didn't like him.
Then we can pass around accusations, make arrests and then have a trial.
That's roughly the order we usually follow.
These men are American military personnel and are entitled the presumption of innocence, period.
OK...I thought the military did their own investigations....again another questionable case...
"It wasn't reported BECAUSE IT DIDN'T HAPPEN BY OUR TROOPS...geezzz...it was insurgents...then our troops are blamed...that's the MO to date..."
See post #27:
"The tetimony was given to USA investigators and exists in affadavits from 3 US soldiers. The story originally came out when 1 of them told the story to a USA councilor(doc?). That began the investigaiton that found the other 2. The alleged rapist was tossed from the Army for paychological reasons, before any of this came out."
Bless you for this common sense post. So many here, as well as in the MSM, are anxious to get on with the penalty part without the evidence gathering and trial parts.
I'm with you on that one. Like so many other stories reported are short on fact. Let's just see the evidence.
The problem here is that our information on most of the details may be coming from a FALSE source. I really don't think it's likely that any FBI agent would misspell his own name, both written and typed. Since that's the case with the affidavit posted on the Internet, I strongly suspect the affidavit is not legitimate.
That doesn't mean that there's not an affidavit somewhere, and people were, according to other sources, arrested, but for what?
In this story you watch the events unfold and you are told by "experts" what all of these things are supposed to mean, but the second you ask a meaningful question, like "was she raped", or "what kind of bullets are in the body", or "why is it Green's medical information has been made public when such action is clearly against the law", and so forth, you get NO ANSWERS from anyone in charge, or from the "documents".
In the end this Rashomon is going to come out totally different than we were all led to believe.
Do you remember at the very beginning of this thing that the officer in charge refused to comment on the nationality of the soldiers involved the initial statements? I was very puzzled by that. Are they perhaps Iraqi soldiers, some of whom have proved to be less than loyal? Does anybody else recall this statement?
Also, hadn't the main accused, Green, already been sent back to the states or removed from the military at the time the story came out (supposedly three months after the event)? Would it be tempting to provide a story about somebody you knew wasn't going to be around anyway? And certainly if you had little knowledge of how the US military functioned, you might think it wouldn't be possible for them to locate him.
Finally, I have been puzzled by many of the details, but in particular I wonder how he could simply have thrown away his AK47. Don't soldiers have to account for their weapons in some way? Or do they just come back from patrol, shrug, and say "ooops, sorry, I lost it."
In an effort to rehabilitate the story the insurgent informants got to the "newsies" and said, quite specifically, "the AK 47 was there at the house".
Oh, I see, it was somebody else's AK47. Right.
Not by me, not with the confessions
Show me the "confessions".
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