Today in Baghdad: Court-Martial to Open in Killings of 3 Iraqis

[babylonsister]

Perhaps the entire Army and Pentagon should be on trial?


Court-Martial to Open in Killings of 3 Iraqis

By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Published: November 6, 2007

An Army sniper team leader charged with murdering three men south of Baghdad will go on trial today in Baghdad in a court-martial that is likely to highlight a classified Pentagon program in which snipers placed fake weapons as “bait” to attract and kill enemy fighters.

The team leader, Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, who was praised by his battalion’s leaders earlier this year for dramatically increasing his unit’s kill count, is charged with the premeditated murder of three men in separate killings last April and May near Iskandariya, a Sunni Arab region south of Baghdad where American forces have battled a tenacious insurgency.

Sergeant Hensley, 27, of Candler, N.C., is one of three members of the First Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, who were charged in the three killings. Sergeant Hensley, an Army Ranger and expert marksman, was the only one of the three snipers charged with all three.

The baiting program was introduced to select members of the First Battalion, including Sergeant Hensley, in late January by the Asymmetrical Warfare Group, a Defense Department agency that develops secret methods of fighting insurgents in Iraq, said Capt. Matthew Didier, the platoon commander at the time of the killings, in a sworn statement that has not been made public but was obtained by The New York Times.

“If we happened to see the individual take the items we would engage, to destroy the enemy,” Captain Didier said in the statement, dated June 23.

Lawyers for Sergeant Hensley and the other snipers accused in the case have suggested the baiting program is relevant to their defense because it demonstrates the extent to which Army and Pentagon commanders approved unconventional methods of killing not only insurgents but also unarmed men of military age who were believed to be enemy fighters.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/us/06sniper.html