Legal News

Iraqi Court Sentences Man to Death for Murder of American Soldiers

By Dan Slater

We’ve covered attempts by the U.S. government to use the federal court system to prosecute American soldiers for alleged war crimes abroad. Those efforts haven’t seen much success. So let’s go to Iraq.

Today, an Iraqi criminal court held a local militant responsible for the kidnapping, torture and murder of three American soldiers in 2006. Here’s a report from the New York Times.

Twenty-nine-year-old Ibrahim Karim al-Qaraguli — who was part of a gang of militants operating in an area south of Baghdad known as the “Triangle of Death” — was sentenced to death, while his two co-defendants were acquitted. The NYT reports that al-Qaraguli appears to have been the driver of one of the vehicles that was used in the soldiers’ abduction and torture.

The kidnapping and killing of the three soldiers, who belonged to the 101st Airborne Division, was one of the more horrific to occur in the course of the war, reports the Times. The three victims were David J. Babineau, Kristian Menchaca, and Thomas Tucker. They were attacked by a group of insurgents as they sat in their Humvee under a bridge near the Euphrates River.

The Mujahideen Shura Council, a militant Sunni group affiliated with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was revenge for the rape of a 14-year-old girl and the subsequent killing of the girl, her parents and younger sister. According to the Times, the three soldiers were in the same unit as six that were charged with the rape and murder.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on October 28, 2008 (boomark / email).