US soldier pleads not guilty to rape, murder Iraqi girl

Has anyone forgotten Georgies liberation of innocent Iraqi Citizens,

They are just collatoral damage I suppose.

Read it and weep

Published: Monday July 30, 2007

Soldier pleads not guilty to rape, murder Iraqi girl'

A US soldier pleaded not guilty Monday to the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the slaying of her family, officials said.
Private Jesse Spielman did, however, plead guilty to lesser charges related to his involvment in the scandalous crime.
Revelations last year that the soldiers calmly plotted to violate a young girl they had seen walking down the street and cover up their crime by killing her family and setting their house on fire undermined the already battered reputation of the US military.
Private Jesse Spielman is the last of four soldiers to face a military tribunal in the case.
He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice, arson, obstruction of justice, and wrongfully touching a corpse but denied all charges that he planned the gang rape and murders.
The alleged ringleader, Steven Green, has been charged as a civilian because he was discharged before the crime came to light. Federal prosecutors have said they will be seeking the death penalty in his case.
Sergeant Paul Cortez and Specialist James Barker -- who both admitted to raping the girl -- received life sentences after pleading guilty earlier this year.
Private Bryan Howard, who served as a watchout, was sentenced to 27 months in jail for acting as an accessory and helping to obstruct justice.
Spielman was not implicated in the rape of Abeer Kassem Hamza al-Janabi in previous court proceedings which revealed how the five soldiers plotted the March 2006 rape and murders in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, while they were drinking gin and whiskey and playing cards at a traffic checkpoint.
In his court martial, Cortez described how a fellow soldier pinned the girl to the ground and held her down while he raped her. Cortez then held al-Janabi down as Barker raped her.
During the trial Cortez said he heard about four or five gunshots from the bedroom where Green had taken the girl's parents, Kassem Hamza Rachid al-Janabi and Fakhriya Taha Mohsine al-Janabi and six year old sister, Hadeel Kassem Hamza al-Janabi.
Green emerged from the room saying he had killed them all and Cortez watched as Green raped the girl and then shot her in the head. Barker then covered her body with a blanket and tossed a lighter to one of the other soldiers who set the blanket alight. The house was soon engulfed in flames, Cortez testified.
The case is the second high-profile incident involving soldiers from Kentucky's storied 101st Airborne.
Three 101st soldiers pleaded guilty to the murder of three Iraqi detainees during a raid north of Baghdad May 9.
That investigation focused a critical light on the US military's controversial and opaque rules of engagement in Iraq.
Jury selection was set to begin Monday afternoon and the case is expected to last several days, an army spokeswoman told AFP.

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