A Soldier's Shame (TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE)
An ex-G.I. is charged with killing an Iraqi girl he raped--and her family--while his comrades stood byBy JULIE RAWE WITH APARISIM GHOSH
Family members describe Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi as tall for her age, skinny, but not eye-catchingly beautiful. As one of her uncles put it, "She was an ordinary girl." So perhaps it was sheer proximity that made the 15-year-old so tantalizing. Her house was less than 1,000 ft. from a U.S. military checkpoint just outside the Iraqi town of Mahmudiyah, and soldiers manning the gate started stopping by just to look at her. Her mother, who grew concerned enough to make plans for Abeer to move in with a cousin, told relatives that whenever she caught the Americans ogling her daughter, they would give her the thumbs-up sign, point to the girl and say, "Very good, very good."
Abeer's brother Mohammed, 13, told TIME he once watched his sister, frozen in fear, as a U.S. soldier ran his index finger down her cheek. Mohammed has since learned that soldier's name: Steven Green. Last week Green, 21, a former Army private first class who was honorably discharged because of a "personality disorder" a month before the criminal allegations came to light, pleaded not guilty to charges of raping Abeer and killing her along with her parents and 7-year-old sister. Five other soldiers have been charged, four of them for conspiring with Green and one for dereliction of duty for not reporting the crimes. The grisly March 12 slayings--in which Abeer's skull was smashed and her legs and torso set on fire--sparked the military's fifth investigation into U.S. personnel accused of murdering Iraqi civilians. But unlike the massacre in Haditha, where Marines are suspected of shooting up to 24 innocent people in November following the death of a beloved comrade, the butchering of Abeer's family does not appear to be the result of vengeance or confusion. Instead, all signs point to premeditated depravity.
According to an affidavit based on sworn statements from several members of Green's infantry unit, Green and three other soldiers abandoned the traffic checkpoint they were manning 20 miles south of Baghdad, in a region littered with roadside bombs, before heading to Abeer's house. Some of them had been drinking, and all but one had changed out of their uniforms, allegedly to avoid easy identification. A fifth soldier, who remained at the checkpoint to monitor the radio, said that when the men returned in bloodied clothes, each of them told him not to speak of the incident again.
Given that the area was known to be a terrorist stronghold, many former and active-duty officers are wondering how such a small convoy of soldiers--a single vehicle's worth--was left on its own, apparently far from the watchful gaze of a superior officer. "Where were the older sergeants, and the lieutenants and captain who should have prevented this crime from happening?" asks Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general.
The apparent lack of supervision makes it harder for military officials to cast this as a one-time, isolated incident, particularly after an Army general concluded last week that Marine officers had been negligent in failing to probe the deaths in Haditha. In a joint statement, the U.S. ambassador and the senior U.S. commander in Iraq called the soldiers' alleged acts in Mahmudiya "absolutely inexcusable and unacceptable." Officials say one purpose of their pledge to vigorously and transparently investigate and prosecute the crimes is to quell the calls from Iraqis, among them Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, to stop granting U.S. troops immunity from local prosecution, a notion that Pentagon officials consider "a nonstarter," especially in a country whose legal system is practically nonexistent.
If there was an element of strategic calculation behind the public remarks of U.S. officials, there was genuine emotion too. In private meetings with Abeer's relatives, military officers apologized repeatedly, and a one-star general hugged her two orphaned brothers. "The general seemed emotionally distressed. He was not pretending," concluded Mahdi Obeid Saleh, Abeer's cousin, who says he rushed to the crime scene and doused the flames on her burning body. Both Saleh and Army investigators initially thought the attack was the work of insurgents. "This is what happens when you harbor terrorists," a military translator lectured Saleh on the day of the slayings.
It wasn't until some three months later that officers got wind of a different story. In June, after insurgents killed a member of Green's troop and kidnapped and beheaded two others--there's suspicion, but no evidence yet, that this attack was a response to the rape and killings--another soldier in their infantry unit told Army combat-stress counselors in Baghdad about the alleged murders in Mahmudiya. Within 24 hours of the initial report, Army officers turned the case over to military criminal investigators at Iraq's Camp Slayer. Six days later, the FBI arrested Green near his grandmother's house in Nebo, N.C., where he was visiting after attending a troopmate's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.
The details of Green's biography contain little to suggest he was destined for trouble but nothing that indicates he knew how to avoid it either. He was born in Midland, Texas, and bounced between parents who divorced when he was 4. Green, who was in his teens when his mother spent six months in jail for drunken driving, dropped out of school after 10th grade. In February 2005, fresh from a three-day jail stint for underage possession of alcohol, he enlisted in the Army, and a month later--during basic training--he was baptized in a makeshift prayer room in a kitchen at Fort Benning, Ga. In December, after Green had been sent to Iraq, he was quoted in a newspaper article as saying of a house-to-house search for insurgents, "It's kind of disappointing that we didn't find anything."
Five months later, Green was honorably discharged with a "personality disorder." In fiscal 2005, 1,038 soldiers--or 0.21% of those on active duty--were discharged with this classification, which used to be referred to as Section 8. (Corporal Klinger was always trying to get one on M*A*S*H.) An Army spokeswoman says such cases can take weeks or even months to process and require a psychiatric evaluation followed by an opportunity for the soldier to modify his behavior as well as the option to file an appeal.
The Pentagon won't say how long it took to process Green's case. But even if his possible instability helped lead to the atrocity, that doesn't explain why his fellow soldiers allegedly participated in the incident--including one who reportedly joined Green in the rape--and helped him cover his tracks. The names of these other soldiers have yet to be released.
Green, meanwhile, is scheduled to be arraigned next month in Kentucky--home to Fort Campbell, where he was most recently stationed--and could end up facing the death penalty. Close relatives won't talk about him. Even distant ones are reluctant. In tiny Denver City, Texas, where he spent a couple of years with his mother's ex-husband and which he claimed as his hometown on Army paperwork, Green's former stepgrandfather thought back about the meals they had shared. "He always seemed a little bit different," B.J. Carr said, before his wife interrupted, "We don't know that boy."With reporting by With reporting by Hussein Hamdi/ Baghdad, Theo Emery/ Fort Campbell, Greg Fulton/ Atlanta, Hilary Hylton/ Denver City, MARK THOMPSON, Douglas Waller/ Washington
Family members describe Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi as tall for her age, skinny, but not eye-catchingly beautiful. As one of her uncles put it, "She was an ordinary girl." So perhaps it was sheer proximity that made the 15-year-old so tantalizing. Her house was less than 1,000 ft. from a U.S. military checkpoint just outside the Iraqi town of Mahmudiyah, and soldiers manning the gate started stopping by just to look at her. Her mother, who grew concerned enough to make plans for Abeer to move in with a cousin, told relatives that whenever she caught the Americans ogling her daughter, they would give her the thumbs-up sign, point to the girl and say, "Very good, very good."
Abeer's brother Mohammed, 13, told TIME he once watched his sister, frozen in fear, as a U.S. soldier ran his index finger down her cheek. Mohammed has since learned that soldier's name: Steven Green. Last week Green, 21, a former Army private first class who was honorably discharged because of a "personality disorder" a month before the criminal allegations came to light, pleaded not guilty to charges of raping Abeer and killing her along with her parents and 7-year-old sister. Five other soldiers have been charged, four of them for conspiring with Green and one for dereliction of duty for not reporting the crimes. The grisly March 12 slayings--in which Abeer's skull was smashed and her legs and torso set on fire--sparked the military's fifth investigation into U.S. personnel accused of murdering Iraqi civilians. But unlike the massacre in Haditha, where Marines are suspected of shooting up to 24 innocent people in November following the death of a beloved comrade, the butchering of Abeer's family does not appear to be the result of vengeance or confusion. Instead, all signs point to premeditated depravity.
According to an affidavit based on sworn statements from several members of Green's infantry unit, Green and three other soldiers abandoned the traffic checkpoint they were manning 20 miles south of Baghdad, in a region littered with roadside bombs, before heading to Abeer's house. Some of them had been drinking, and all but one had changed out of their uniforms, allegedly to avoid easy identification. A fifth soldier, who remained at the checkpoint to monitor the radio, said that when the men returned in bloodied clothes, each of them told him not to speak of the incident again.
Given that the area was known to be a terrorist stronghold, many former and active-duty officers are wondering how such a small convoy of soldiers--a single vehicle's worth--was left on its own, apparently far from the watchful gaze of a superior officer. "Where were the older sergeants, and the lieutenants and captain who should have prevented this crime from happening?" asks Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star general.
The apparent lack of supervision makes it harder for military officials to cast this as a one-time, isolated incident, particularly after an Army general concluded last week that Marine officers had been negligent in failing to probe the deaths in Haditha. In a joint statement, the U.S. ambassador and the senior U.S. commander in Iraq called the soldiers' alleged acts in Mahmudiya "absolutely inexcusable and unacceptable." Officials say one purpose of their pledge to vigorously and transparently investigate and prosecute the crimes is to quell the calls from Iraqis, among them Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, to stop granting U.S. troops immunity from local prosecution, a notion that Pentagon officials consider "a nonstarter," especially in a country whose legal system is practically nonexistent.
If there was an element of strategic calculation behind the public remarks of U.S. officials, there was genuine emotion too. In private meetings with Abeer's relatives, military officers apologized repeatedly, and a one-star general hugged her two orphaned brothers. "The general seemed emotionally distressed. He was not pretending," concluded Mahdi Obeid Saleh, Abeer's cousin, who says he rushed to the crime scene and doused the flames on her burning body. Both Saleh and Army investigators initially thought the attack was the work of insurgents. "This is what happens when you harbor terrorists," a military translator lectured Saleh on the day of the slayings.
It wasn't until some three months later that officers got wind of a different story. In June, after insurgents killed a member of Green's troop and kidnapped and beheaded two others--there's suspicion, but no evidence yet, that this attack was a response to the rape and killings--another soldier in their infantry unit told Army combat-stress counselors in Baghdad about the alleged murders in Mahmudiya. Within 24 hours of the initial report, Army officers turned the case over to military criminal investigators at Iraq's Camp Slayer. Six days later, the FBI arrested Green near his grandmother's house in Nebo, N.C., where he was visiting after attending a troopmate's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.
The details of Green's biography contain little to suggest he was destined for trouble but nothing that indicates he knew how to avoid it either. He was born in Midland, Texas, and bounced between parents who divorced when he was 4. Green, who was in his teens when his mother spent six months in jail for drunken driving, dropped out of school after 10th grade. In February 2005, fresh from a three-day jail stint for underage possession of alcohol, he enlisted in the Army, and a month later--during basic training--he was baptized in a makeshift prayer room in a kitchen at Fort Benning, Ga. In December, after Green had been sent to Iraq, he was quoted in a newspaper article as saying of a house-to-house search for insurgents, "It's kind of disappointing that we didn't find anything."
Five months later, Green was honorably discharged with a "personality disorder." In fiscal 2005, 1,038 soldiers--or 0.21% of those on active duty--were discharged with this classification, which used to be referred to as Section 8. (Corporal Klinger was always trying to get one on M*A*S*H.) An Army spokeswoman says such cases can take weeks or even months to process and require a psychiatric evaluation followed by an opportunity for the soldier to modify his behavior as well as the option to file an appeal.
The Pentagon won't say how long it took to process Green's case. But even if his possible instability helped lead to the atrocity, that doesn't explain why his fellow soldiers allegedly participated in the incident--including one who reportedly joined Green in the rape--and helped him cover his tracks. The names of these other soldiers have yet to be released.
Green, meanwhile, is scheduled to be arraigned next month in Kentucky--home to Fort Campbell, where he was most recently stationed--and could end up facing the death penalty. Close relatives won't talk about him. Even distant ones are reluctant. In tiny Denver City, Texas, where he spent a couple of years with his mother's ex-husband and which he claimed as his hometown on Army paperwork, Green's former stepgrandfather thought back about the meals they had shared. "He always seemed a little bit different," B.J. Carr said, before his wife interrupted, "We don't know that boy."With reporting by With reporting by Hussein Hamdi/ Baghdad, Theo Emery/ Fort Campbell, Greg Fulton/ Atlanta, Hilary Hylton/ Denver City, MARK THOMPSON, Douglas Waller/ Washington
posted by ABEER QASSIM HAMZA at 11.9.06
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