Iraq rejects girl’s killer’s ruling

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Last Thursday’s court ruling against a U.S. soldier who raped and killed an Iraqi girl flared up reactions of rejection among Iraqi citizens and officials, who described the ruling as ‘unfair.’ MP and member of the human rights committee, Hanien Qadou, condemned the ruling as unfair. “The decision is biased and we had hoped that the trial was held in Iraq,” the lawmaker told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The American judiciary system permits the death sentence in several states and the court should use this ruling on the soldier as he perpetrated several crimes, including raping, killing and burning,” he added. Regarding the Iraqi government’s stance on the ruling, he said that “no official stance has been taken by the government yet.” A former U.S. soldier convicted of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing her and her family will be sentenced to life in prison after a jury on Thursday failed to agree on whether he should be executed. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Steven Green, 24, found guilty by the same jury two weeks ago of committing the 2006 crimes near Baghdad. But after two days of deliberations, the jury of nine women and three men could not decide if he should be executed or given life without parole, so the life sentence prevailed. Judge Thomas Russell of the U.S. District Court in Paducah, Kentucky, who presided over the trial, will issue the sentence on September 4. The nine-woman, three-man jury convicted Green on May 7 of raping and killing 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, then shooting her parents and 5-year-old sister to death on March 12, 2006. The jurors deliberated for two days on his sentence but were unable to reach a unanimous agreement. The murders took place in Mahmoudiya, about 20 miles south of Baghdad in an area where some of the country’s worst insurgent violence was then unfolding. Green, 24, is among a handful of former service members prosecuted under a 2000 law that allows the government to bring charges in a federal civilian court for crimes committed overseas while in uniform. The first former U.S. soldier to face the death penalty before a civilian jury for a wartime crime, Green was honorably discharged for a personality disorder before his role in the crimes was discovered. For his part, the director of rights’ protection department in the human rights ministry said that his ministry was surprised by the ruling made by American court, noting that the killer deserves death sentence. “We respect the American judiciary and we can’t intervene and object the ruling but the court should take into consideration Iraqis feeling and the victims’ families in this case,” Kamel Ameen Hashem told IraqiNews.com news agency. “What happened is an American farce and the government should take an official stance against this ruling,” Jassem Ali, an employee, said. For her part, Fatma Asaad, a teacher, called on the international organizations interested in the human rights to reject the ruling against the U.S. soldier and to repeat the trial again. SH (I)/SR 1