US Army Charges Soldiers With Killing Innocent Iraqis

WASHINGTON, 21 June 2006 — The US Army has charged three US soldiers with the premeditated murder of three Iraqi detainees as well as with threatening the life of a fellow soldier who they feared would dispute their accounts of the deaths, military officials said Monday. The three Americans were identified as staff Sgt. Raymond L. Girouard, Spc. William B. Hunsaker and Pfc. Corey R. Clagett, all members of the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division. They were charged accused of killing three males of “apparent Middle Eastern descent” at the Muthana Chemical Complex north of Baghdad by shooting them at close range, according to the official Army charges made public yesterday.

A murder conviction in the military carries the possibility of the death penalty.

The accused soldiers are being held in Kuwait, a Pentagon official said. Military officials first mentioned the investigation in a brief news release June 16.

But details of how the three soldiers shot the men have remained sketchy. In addition to murder, the soldiers were charged with conspiracy and with threatening another soldier. Military officials said the accused initially reported they shot the detainees while they were trying to flee, but that account was contradicted by a junior soldier who saw the shooting. The accused soldiers are charged with threatening to kill Mason on May 29, as the group was traveling from its own operating base to Camp Speicher, near Tikrit, where the Criminal Investigation Division has an office. Girouard is accused of threatening to kill Mason six different times in the weeks after the detainees died. Hunsaker is accused of threatening Mason four times, and Clagett twice.

The charges are the latest in a string of investigations into whether US forces have been responsible for the wrongful deaths of Iraqis, either in custody or during combat operations.

The most serious among them is a criminal investigation into whether Marines shot to death 24 civilians in the town of Haditha in November after they came under attack from a roadside bomb. In addition, seven other Marines and a Navy corpsman are being held at Camp Pendleton, Ca., in connection with the death of an Iraqi man in another town, Hamandiya. Since the start of the Iraq war, the military has brought criminal charges against at least 20 other service members in deaths of Iraqis. The military has not executed anyone since April 1961, but nine people are on death row, including a sergeant in the 101st Airborne who killed two officers and wounded 14 soldiers in Kuwait in March 2003.