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Future Based On History!! Steven D. Green gets 90 Days and a slap on the wrist for rape and murder! Released after time served!!

Published on Thursday, July 6, 2006 by Los Angeles Times

In Cold Blood: Iraqi Tells of Massacre at Farmhouse!!

A cousin describes finding the shot and shattered bodies. A U.S. soldier is in custody.

by Raheem Salman and J. Michael Kennedy

BAGHDAD — He was the first to enter the charred farmhouse where the bodies of his relatives lay strewn about the floor, shot and bludgeoned to death.

And he watched more than three months later as a U.S. Army officer took the two surviving children in his arms, barely able to hold back tears as he told them that the people who had killed their family would be punished.

"Never in my mind could I have imagined such a gruesome sight," Abu Firas Janabi said of the day in March when his cousin, Fakhriya Taha Muhsen; her husband, Kasim Hamza Rasheed; and their two daughters were slain and their farmhouse set ablaze.

"Kasim's corpse was in the corner of the room, and his head was smashed into pieces," he said. The 5-year-old daughter, Hadel, was beside her father, and Janabi said he could see that Fakhriya's arms had been broken.

In another room, he found 15-year-old Abeer, naked and burned, with her head smashed in "by a concrete block or a piece of iron."

"There were burns from the bottom of her stomach to the end of her body, except for her feet," he said.

"I did not believe what I was seeing. I tried to fool myself into believing I was in a dream. But the problem was that we were not dreaming. We put a piece of cloth over her body. Then I left the house together with my wife."

At least four American soldiers from a nearby checkpoint are the prime suspects. The case, which includes the alleged rape of the older daughter, has caused a firestorm in the United States and Iraq. And the soldiers, including one charged Monday with rape and murder, have become lurid symbols of the American military at its worst.

The image has not been helped in recent weeks by the emergence of other accusations that U.S. soldiers had killed Iraqi civilians.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki complained Wednesday that immunity from Iraqi prosecution had encouraged atrocities by American troops. And the U.S. military is clearly on the defensive. On Wednesday, Army Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the chief military spokesman in Iraq, defended the troops here, complaining that the "acts of a few outweigh the deeds of many."

Janabi, who has emerged as a potential witness, has been interviewed by a U.S. investigator.

He lives about half a mile from the scene of the killings, just outside the town of Mahmoudiya. It's agricultural country, where the small farms are divided by mesh wire fences and the people who toil on them make a subsistence living.

Janabi and his wife were home March 12 when a neighbor ran to tell him that the farmhouse of his cousin and her husband was on fire and that he could see slain family members inside the burning building.

Janabi said that when he arrived at the house, he began to call for others to help him.

"But nobody came," he said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Mahmoudiya, describing the eeriness he felt as he and his wife stood there. "I felt that I had made a disastrous decision. I felt I had made a mistake to rush so quickly to the house, because if the murderers were still there, they would kill me as well."

He and his wife had to douse some of the flames before they could enter the home.

The couple had found the two young boys in the family crying as they stood outside the farmhouse, where they could see the bodies inside. The boys had been at school when the killings occurred but were home by the time Janabi and his wife arrived.

Together, they went to a checkpoint guarded by Iraqi soldiers to tell them what had happened. Then they went back to the house and watched as the bodies were placed in nylon bags and taken to a nearby Iraqi base.

Janabi said Abeer was not in school and, like other peasant girls, seldom left the house. But he said that three days before the killings, the Rasheed family was at his house and his cousin was complaining that the American soldiers at the nearby guard post were constantly searching her house. Janabi said the parents believed that the "girl was the target."

"I suggested they come and live in the house beside mine that was empty," Janabi said. "But they said, 'There are a lot of families close to us, and nothing bad will happen.' "

Janabi said he returned to the burned-out house the day after the attack as villagers gathered to scavenge for furniture. He asked the villagers whether they knew of any enemies that Kasim had made. They answered no, saying he was just a poor farmer like them who barely made ends meet, working in a Baghdad factory to earn an extra $3 a day. But the villagers had heard stories about the slayings.

In one story, the killers wore black shirts and military pants. In another, they were wearing track suits, and in a third, there was a dog with them.

Janabi said he suspected the Americans because the dozens of shots fired would have been heard by U.S. troops at the nearby checkpoint. And from what he could gather, the killers were at the house for more than two hours, too long for them to have gone unnoticed by the Americans. He also said he suspected that whoever carried out the killings had used Kasim's AK-47 assault rifle, the only item that Janabi said was missing from the house.

Initially, U.S. military officials said the killings were the result of intra-Iraqi feuding, a plausible conclusion given the dozens of revenge killings that happen each day in the country. But a U.S. soldier came forward recently with rumors of American involvement in the alleged rape and killings.
On Monday, Steven D. Green, 21, a former private with the 502nd Infantry Regiment, was charged in Charlotte, N.C., in the case. The Army has said that no other soldiers have been charged or detained, but that several were under close supervision in Iraq.

Janabi said he learned of the inquiry involving the soldiers last week, and an American investigator asked him to tell his side of the story.

"He was saying that he wants to find out the truth," Janabi said. "I told him I didn't want any money or compensation. The most important thing is that the criminal must be punished in a punishment in the same level of the crime he committed. He must not be imprisoned for four to six months and that is all."

Janabi said he asked the investigator why all this was happening now, when the killings took place three months earlier.

"He told me that a soldier confessed and we want to know the truth," he said.

Then, Janabi said, the investigator told him that a high-ranking U.S. officer wished to pay his condolences to the family. The next day, he brought Fakhriya's cousin, Mohammed, to the base along with the two boys to meet the commander.

"He hugged the children and kissed them several times," Janabi said. "It was hard for him to control his tears."

The discussions, Janabi said, now center on whether the bodies can be exhumed for autopsies. He said they received only a cursory examination when they were taken to the Mahmoudiya hospital in March.

Janabi said that the two boys were with their uncle in the village of Iskandariya, but that their faces told the effects of their misery.

"They lost their father and mother," Janabi said. "They lost their house and sisters. Basically their family was too poor and they have not inherited anything. Their life is deplorable."

Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0706-02.htm

SUCH A NICE YOUNG MAN!! AN ALL-AMERICAN BOY!!

In this photo provided by the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office, Steven D. Green is shown in A booking mug shot at the Mecklenburg County jail in Charlotte, N.C., Monday, July 3, 2006. [AP]

US soldier charged with rape of Iraqi

(AP) Updated: 2006-07-04 09:25

A former soldier discharged because of a "personality disorder" was accused in federal court Monday of executing an Iraqi family so he and other troops could rape and murder a young woman they had been eyeing at a traffic checkpoint.

Steven D. Green, a skinny, 21-year-old former private, was led into court wearing baggy shorts, flip-flops and a Johnny Cash T-shirt. He spoke only to confirm his identity and stared as a federal magistrate ordered him held without bond on murder and rape charges that carry a possible death penalty.

Green became the first person identified in the latest case of alleged killings of Iraqi civilians by US troops, horrific deaths discovered in a burned house near Mahmoudiya in March that military officials initially blamed on insurgents.

According to a 10-page federal affidavit, Green and three other soldiers from the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division had talked about raping the young woman, whom they first saw while working at the checkpoint. On the day of the attack, the document said, Green and other soldiers drank alcohol and changed out of their uniforms to avoid detection before going to the woman's house. Green covered his face with a brown T-shirt.

Once there, the affidavit said, Green took three members of the family, an adult male and female, and a girl estimated to be 5 years old, into a bedroom, after which shots were heard from inside.

"Green came to the bedroom door and told everyone, 'I just killed them. All are dead,'" the affidavit said. The affidavit is based on interviews conducted by the FBI and military investigators with three unidentified soldiers assigned to Green's platoon. One of the soldiers said he witnessed another soldier and Green rape the woman.

"After the rape, (the soldier) witnessed Green shoot the woman in the head two to three times," the affidavit said.

Investigators also interviewed a fifth soldier, who was left behind to mind the radio at the traffic checkpoint. That soldier said Green and three others returned from the woman's house "with blood on their clothes, which they burned. Immediately after this, they each told (the soldier) that this is never to be discussed again."

An official familiar with details of the investigation in Iraq has told reporters that a flammable liquid was used to burn the rape victim's body in an attempted cover-up.

The affidavit noted that prosecutors have photos taken by Army investigators in Iraq of all four bodies found inside a burned house and a photo of a burned body of "what appears to be a woman with blankets thrown over her upper torso."

The age of the young woman was unclear. FBI documents estimated her age at 25, but a neighbor of the family said the rape victim was 14 and her sister was 10.

The Washington Post reported the rape victim was 15 and that her mother worried her daughter had attracted the attention of US soldiers at a checkpoint. The mother asked a neighbor if the girl could sleep at his house.

The neighbor agreed but the girl and her family was attacked the next day, according to the Post. The neighbor told the Post he was one of the first people to arrive at the house after the attack and found the girl dead in a corner, her hair and a pillow burned and her dress pushed up to her neck.

Green, who was arrested Friday in the town of Marion northwest of Charlotte, is being prosecuted in federal, rather than military court because he is no longer in the Army. According to the affidavit, his 11-month-stint ended "before this incident came to light" when he was given an honorable discharge "due to a personality disorder."

The soldiers accused in the rape and killings are from the same platoon as two soldiers whose mutilated bodies were found June 19, three days after they were abducted by insurgents near Youssifiyah, southwest of Baghdad. Military officials say they believe guilt over the mutilations may have spurred a confession by one of the soldiers during a combat-stress debriefing late last month.

No other soldier has been charged in the case, said Maj. Joseph Breasseale, a US military spokesman in Baghdad. However, military officials have said four Army soldiers have had their weapons taken away and were being confined to their base near Mahmoudiya.
The mayor of Mahmoudiya, Mouayad Fadhil, said Monday that Iraqi authorities had started their own investigation. He said US Army officers were also seeking permission to exhume one of the bodies; the US military declined to comment on the report because the investigation is ongoing.

According to the affidavit, Green was arrested while traveling back to Fort Campbell after attending a funeral for one of the mutilated soldiers in Arlington, Va.

He was quoted in December by the Fort Campbell Courier about a search for insurgents and expressed surprise at the ease of the mission.

"I was surprised by how many people weren't home, but the ones who were there were submissive and let us look through their things," he said.

Court officials said Green will have a preliminary hearing and a detention hearing on July 10 in Charlotte, and will then be brought to Louisville to stand trial.

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