A United States soldier is expected to be sentenced on Saturday after being found guilty of murder for shooting to death a severely wounded Iraqi civilian, while the US army pressed its sole supplier of armored Humvees to increase production amid a growing domestic controversy over armour for troops.
At a court martial, Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne was found guilty on Friday of the unpremeditated murder of a severely wounded Iraqi civilian in Baghdad’s Sadr City district in August. He is expected to be sentenced on Saturday, although a pre-trial plea bargain limits his penalty to 10 years in jail.
The murder of Kassim Hassan took place after US soldiers spotted a garbage truck apparently dropping homemade bombs in Sadr City, the capital’s most populous Shi’ite Muslim neighbourhood, the court heard.
The soldiers started shooting at the truck, which caught fire, and a severely wounded Hassan pulled himself out of the vehicle and fell to the ground.
”When I found him, I came to the conclusion that he needed to be put out of his misery,” Horne said. ”I fired a shot into his head and his attempts to breathe ceased.”
Horne was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder with two other soldiers, Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban and Second Lieutenant Erick Anderson, who have yet to stand trial.
In Washington, Army Secretary Francis Harvey called Armor Holdings Inc on Friday to ask that deliveries be increased from 450 to 550 armoured Humvees a month after the company said it can boost production by 22%, said a senior army spokesperson who asked not to be identified.
The US administration has come under fire for failing to equip soldiers in Iraq with vehicles armoured against roadside explosions, a chief cause of US troop deaths.
The shortage of armour-plated vehicles and body armour has been a longstanding issue.
It was reignited when a soldier asked US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait on Wednesday why his comrades are digging through landfill for scrap metal and armoured glass to protect vehicles taking them into Iraq.
Rumsfeld’s response: ”As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Meanwhile, the number of American troops killed in action in Iraq climbed over the 1 000 mark.
The US marines announced that one of their men was killed in action on Thursday during an operation in Al-Anbar province, where the Sunni Muslim hotspots of Fallujah and Ramadi are located.
Pentagon statistics released on Thursday showed the number of US military personnel killed in action in Iraq was 1 003. It was unclear if the latest reported death was included in that figure.
Two US soldiers were killed on Thursday and four wounded when two helicopters collided at a military airfield in Mosul in northern Iraq, the army said.
Elections looming
With the January elections looming, Iraq’s electoral commission postponed until December 15 the deadline for parties to present their list of candidates. The original deadline was by the end of Friday, but several political movements asked for more time.
Iraqis are to elect a 275-member national assembly on January 30, the country’s first free elections in half a century. The assembly will write a Constitution, which — if adopted in a referendum — will form the basis for another poll to be held by December 15 next year.
Shi’ites on Thursday unveiled a broad electoral alliance.
The 228-strong list, backed by the Shi’ites’ highest religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, includes no major Sunni political movements and excludes firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Shi’ites, who make up about 60% of Iraq’s 26-million-strong population, were long oppressed by Saddam Hussein’s Sunni minority, but since his ousting they have been flexing their new-found political muscle.
The main parties representing the Sunni minority have called for the election to be postponed because of ongoing insurgent violence.
Despite the relative calm in Iraq, insurgent attacks continued on Friday.
An Iraqi civilian was killed by a roadside bomb in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and a businessman working with coalition forces was kidnapped in the Baiji area, further to the north, police said.
Also in the Baiji area, unknown assailants fired anti-tank rockets at a Turkish truck carrying goods to a US military base.
The rockets set the vehicle on fire. The fate of the driver was not immediately known.
In Baquba, three civilians were wounded when the bus in which were travelling was hit by a roadside bomb.
Two truck drivers of Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan nationality taken hostage in Iraq in October have been released, a government minister in Dhaka said. The news followed the release of a Lebanese businessman also seized in October. — Sapa-AFP