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Inquiry Into Iraq Killings Focuses on Supervision of Soldiers    [
Iraq's PM Calls for Probe Into Rape Case    [

    US Sees Possible Links Between Incidents in Iraq
    By Julian E. Barnes
    The Los Angeles Times

    Wednesday 05 July 2006

The slayings of three soldiers near the site of an alleged rape and the killing of a family may have been an act of revenge, an official says.

    Baghdad - The U.S. military is investigating whether the kidnapping, killing and mutilation of two American soldiers was carried out in retaliation for an alleged rape and murder of an Iraqi woman by another member of the same unit three months earlier, a military official said Tuesday.

    The incidents occurred in nearby towns and the soldiers involved were in the same unit. The bodies of the two American soldiers and at least one Iraqi were mutilated. A third U.S. soldier was killed during the kidnapping of his comrades.

    The official, citing results of a preliminary military investigation, also said military officers had forced the chief suspect in the rape case out of the Army before the accusation against him came to light because they believed he could pose a threat to Iraqi civilians.

    The official spoke on condition of anonymity because investigations of both incidents are incomplete.

    Military officials initially believed that the three soldiers attacked in the town of Yousifiya were selected because they were vulnerable when separated from the rest of their unit. But as information about the alleged rape-killing has emerged, so have new theories about the kidnappings-killings.

    "Was it a target of opportunity or was it a warning: Don't do this to our women?" said the military official.

    The rarity of kidnappings of U.S. troops - only one other is missing in Iraq - and the apparent complexity and brutality of the attack in Yousifiya has investigators looking further into possible connections.

    "We are trying to find out if this hit on these three soldiers was a retribution for the rape and murder," said the official. "I cannot fathom the audacity it would take to do such a complex attack. What sort of rage exists in the populace? Are they saying, 'We aren't going to take this from people who do this to our women?' "

    On Monday, Steven D. Green, 21, a former Army private with the 502nd Infantry Regiment, appeared in federal court in Charlotte, N.C., on charges that he raped and murdered an Iraqi woman in the town of Mahmoudiya. According to accounts provided to investigators by other soldiers, Green dressed in black and took several other soldiers with him to a nearby house with the intent of raping the woman. According to an affidavit submitted by FBI Special Agent Gregor J. Ahlers in support of the arrest warrant, Green killed the woman's parents and young sister; he and another soldier raped the woman; then he shot her in the head and set her body on fire.

    Ahlers said his six-page affidavit was drawn largely from the work of Army investigators. No other current or former soldier has been charged in the case.

    Although the incident occurred in March, military officials learned only recently that it might have been carried out by a group of Americans, rather than the insurgents who initially were blamed.

    The attack on the three American soldiers working alone at a checkpoint in Yousifiya, near Mahmoudiya, occurred in June. One soldier, Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed. Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore., were kidnapped, apparently tortured and killed. Their bodies were found beheaded and mutilated beyond recognition.

    It was during counseling after the deaths of the three soldiers that military officials heard the allegations that Americans were responsible for the killing of the four civilians in Mahmoudiya.

    By that time, Green had been honorably discharged from the Army. Officially, he was discharged because of a "personality disorder." But unit commanders removed Green because they feared he posed a threat to Iraqi civilians, said the military official, citing documents produced by investigators.

    The other soldiers remain under investigation.

    Responding to the allegations against Green, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Tuesday denounced murder or rape of Iraqis as "totally unacceptable." Appearing on NBC's "Today Show," Pace promised that the military would find out what happened in Mahmoudiya.

    "We will do the investigations, we will find out what the truth is and, if necessary, we will take those who deserve to be taken to court so they can have their day in court," Pace said.

    Military officials are reeling from a series of allegations of atrocities involving U.S. troops in Iraq. The cases include the slayings in November of 24 civilians in Haditha. The graphic details about the Mahmoudiya case have top officers in Iraq worried that the charges could prove as explosive as the photographs of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.

    Some Iraqi officials have expressed outrage, and the mayor of the area that includes Mahmoudiya has promised his own investigation.

    As the American military was wrestling with how to handle the situation, another high-ranking Iraqi official was briefly kidnapped Tuesday on the outskirts of Baghdad.

    Gunmen seized the deputy minister of electricity and his 11 bodyguards as they were traveling toward the city in a four-car caravan.

    The minister, Raad Hareth, was ambushed by men dressed in security force uniforms at a fake checkpoint and his bodyguards offered no resistance, officials said. He was released Tuesday evening with no official explanation.

    Hareth's kidnapping was the second high-profile abduction in a week. Taiseer Mashhadani, a Sunni member of parliament, was kidnapped in a Shiite neighborhood along with several bodyguards. There has been no word on her whereabouts.

    The U.S. military said Tuesday that it had carried out an air assault in Babil province, capturing 12 insurgents, including seven members of a local terrorist network.

    The military also said it arrested three Al Qaeda operatives during a raid Monday near Tikrit and that one had been involved in attacks on American and Iraqi forces.

    In Baghdad, a roadside bomb killed two police officers and injured four.

    Officials said 28 bodies were found in the capital during the day, many of them shot to death and bearing torture marks.

    In Karbala, about 50 miles south of Baghdad, a hospital source said two armed men riding a motorcycle killed three men and a woman in various areas of the city. The motive for the killings was unclear.

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    Times staff writer J. Michael Kennedy contributed to this report.

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    Inquiry Into Iraq Killings Focuses on Supervision of Soldiers
    By Edward Wong
    The New York Times

    Wednesday 05 July 2006

    Baghdad - The military investigation of soldiers suspected of raping an Iraqi woman and killing her and her family is looking at whether poor oversight within the soldiers' unit helped give them the chance to operate on their own, American military officials said Tuesday.

    Specifically, investigators are examining whether procedural lapses in how the unit handled convoys and traffic checkpoints gave the soldiers leeway to operate too independently outside their base, the officials said.

    The procedures will be given a "top-down scrub," one of the officials added. This broad approach to the investigation leaves open the possibility that senior officers in the unit, the 502nd Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, may be implicated later.

    At least four soldiers are already being investigated, including a recently discharged man, Steven D. Green, 21, who had been a private. He was arrested in North Carolina on Monday and charged with rape and the murders of four Iraqis on March 12 in a farming area around Mahmudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad. Investigators say they believe that Mr. Green was the ringleader, a military official said Tuesday.

    In the hours before the deaths, the soldiers were stationed at a traffic control point about 600 feet from the victims' home, apparently operating with just a single vehicle, according to an American military official and a federal affidavit filed by prosecutors on Monday.

    That violates military regulations here. Because of the dangers of Iraq, it is virtually unheard of for a military vehicle to be allowed to leave an American base without being accompanied by at least one other. So a central question is: how were these soldiers able to get out and operate on their own, presumably in a Humvee?

    The same issue is under scrutiny in an investigation into the deaths of three soldiers from the same unit last month. Those soldiers were traveling in a single vehicle in the area of Yusufiya, an insurgent stronghold near Mahmudiya, when they were ambushed by guerrillas, military officials have said.

    One was killed on the spot and the others abducted; the mutilated bodies of the kidnapped men were found days later along a road booby-trapped with bombs.

    American officials say they were from the same platoon of the 502nd Infantry as the soldiers under suspicion for the rape and murders in March. In fact, senior officers first learned of the crime when a soldier stationed at the traffic checkpoint on March 12 talked about it in a counseling session after the two mutilated bodies were discovered, the affidavit says.

    So far, investigators have not drawn a direct link between the crime and the Yusufiya ambush.

    Maj. Gen. James D. Thurman, the commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, to which the 502nd Infantry is attached for this tour, ordered the investigation.

    "We do not as a rule travel as a single-vehicle convoy," said a military official who, like other officials, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation.

    The official said investigators were focusing on procedures in the 502nd, not within the entire Fourth Infantry Division. The 502nd is a traditional title for the Second Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division.

    Mr. Green and the other soldiers are suspected of involvement in raping the Iraqi woman and killing her, her younger sister and their mother and father. The mayor of Mahmudiya has said the rape victim, Abeer Qasem Hamzeh, was only 15, and had multiple bullet wounds and burn marks. The soldiers are suspected of trying to burn her body to cover up the crime and then setting the house on fire.

    For a year and a half before he went into the Army, Mr. Green lived with his father, John Green, in an apartment in Midland, Tex., according to a neighbor there, Albert Rodriguez. Mr. Green, he said, was "a normal kid; he didn't look like he would hurt a fly." Mr. Rodriguez added that the young man seemed "more like a follower than a leader."

    The Iraqi justice minister, Hashim al-Shibli, said in an interview on Tuesday on Al Arabiya television that the United Nations should ensure the soldiers are properly punished.

    Shortly after the murders, three Iraqi men approached another American traffic checkpoint in the area and told the soldiers that an Iraqi family had been killed in their home, the affidavit says.

    "It was originally believed that anti-Iraqi forces or other entities committed the offense," the document says, using the military's term for insurgents.

    The Mahmudiya area is one of the most volatile places in Iraq, with a constellation of armed groups vying for dominance. It would not have been unusual for Iraqis discovering the bodies to assume that other Iraqis had committed the crime rather than Americans.

    Maj. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman for the American command, said in a telephone interview that the three other soldiers implicated in the investigation, whose names have not been released, were confined to base and had not been charged yet.

    The affidavit says four soldiers, including Mr. Green, took part in violence at the house, while a fifth was told to stay at the vehicle to monitor the radio. Mr. Green and one other soldier took part in the rape, the document says. All four had been drinking beforehand, according to the document.

    The American military announced the investigation last week, but reaction among Iraqis has been muted. The kind of outrage that accompanied the Abu Ghraib scandal is almost nowhere to be seen.

    The inquiry into the possible executions of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha by marines has also brought the same lukewarm response. More than three years into the war, many Iraqis say they are no longer surprised by abuses on the part of American troops. Iraqis seem more concerned these days about spiraling sectarian violence.

    But there were some, like the justice minister, Mr. Shibli, who called for retribution on behalf of the victims in Mahmudiya.

    "The American soldiers violated everything," said Omar al-Jubouri, the human rights officer for the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni Arab political group.

    "All the trials conducted by the Americans have so far been theater," he added. "We demand they impose punishments that will prevent such crimes."

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    Omar al-Neami contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and Barbara Novovitch from Midland, Texas

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    Iraq's PM Calls for Probe Into Rape Case
    The Associated Press

    Wednesday 05 July 2006

    Kuwait City - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Wednesday he wants an independent Iraqi investigation, or at least a joint investigation with coalition forces, into the alleged rape and murder of an Iraqi girl by U.S. troops.

    Al-Maliki's comments during a visit to Kuwait were his first on the case, in which a former Army soldier was charged Monday in federal court in Charlotte, N.C.

    At least four other U.S. soldiers still in Iraq are under investigation.

    The girl's father, mother and sister were also killed in the March attack on their house in Mahmoudiyah, south of Baghdad.

    "We are going to demand an independent Iraqi investigation or at least a joint investigation between us and the multi-national forces," al-Maliki said.

    He said crimes against Iraqis were not acceptable and that coalition troops' immunity from Iraqi prosecution should be reviewed.

    "We believe that the immunity given to members of coalition forces encouraged them to commit such crimes in cold blood - the thing that makes it necessary to review it," he said.