US Soldier Murdered Iraqi Prisoners

-

U.S. Soldier Guilty of Murdering Iraq Detainees

15 April 2009

U.S. Court finds John Hately guilty of killing four bound and blindfolded Iraqis.
A U.S. Army Sergeant was found guilty Wednesday of the murder of four detainees in Iraq in 2007, but acquitted in the death of a fifth. John E. Hatley, 40, was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, but cleared on one count of obstruction of justice. Had entered a plea of not guilty, showed no emotion as the verdict from the eight-member jury was read out. He embraced his wife and soldiers from his former unit afterwards.
Hatley had been accused of involvement in two separate incidents. The first involved the shooting of a wounded detainee who medics said was close to death on or about January 3, 2007.
The second shooting -- of four blindfolded detainees -- allegedly took place in March or April 2007 in or near southwest Baghdad. Hatley was the highest ranking of three soldiers to face trial for killing the four detainees who, prosecutors say, were shot "execution style".
Private Michael Leahy, a combat medic, and Sergeant First Class Joseph P. Mayo were found guilty in March and sentenced to life and 35 years in prison respectively, with the possibility of parole.
An exact date and location have not been determined for the second shooting, however, and the bodies, which witnesses said were dumped into a canal, have never been found.
At the time, Hartley's unit was coming to terms with a fatal sniper attack on another sergeant a few weeks earlier.
The men were stationed at a highly exposed combat outpost in West Rashid, one of the most violent Baghdad neighbourhoods at the time.



Most civilian deaths in Iraq from executions

The most common cause of death for civilians in the first five years of the Iraq war was execution after being kidnapped, according to a report published Wednesday by an independent casualties monitor. Iraq Body Count (IBC), a group supported by researchers from the United States and Britain, said that such killings accounted for 33 percent of all civilian deaths in the five years after the 2003 US-led invasion. Based on a systematic survey of media accounts the group found that at least 19,706 people were kidnapped and executed during that period and that the remains of 5,760 of them, nearly one third, showed signs of torture.
The second leading cause of death was small arms gunfire, which killed 11,877 people. Suicide bombers killed 8,708 people during the same period and car bombs killed 5,360.
In the months after the invasion Iraq erupted with a fierce insurgency that briefly united Sunni and Shiite Muslims before it was convulsed by a wave of gruesome sectarian killings that peaked in 2006. At the height of the violence armed gangs were abducting, torturing and executing dozens of people each day. Bodies were frequently found with bruises, burns, and holes drilled into them with power tools. In the last two years US and Iraqi forces have allied with local tribes and former insurgents to bring a fragile calm to most areas, but armed groups continue to carry out sporadic attacks across the country.
The survey was conducted by IBC and researchers at Kings College and the University of London. It was to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday.
The researchers excluded more than 10,027 deaths that took place during periods of "prolonged violence" including the first weeks of the invasion and the US assault on the former insurgent bastion of Fallujah in November 2004.