. . . when a US soldier helps to kill an Iraqi prisoner in his custody and under his control, but you would be dead wrong.

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — An Army staff sergeant who was facing a murder charge in the death of an Iraqi detainee pleaded guilty to assault on Wednesday and received more than a year’s confinement.

Staff Sgt. Hal M. Warner was sentenced to 17 months’ confinement, had his rank reduced to private and was given a bad conduct discharge. He pleaded guilty to charges of assault, maltreatment of a subordinate and making a false statement. […]

Warner admitted Wednesday to standing on the detainee’s legs while he was defenseless during the assault then days later helping strip Mohammed naked and leaving him in the desert. Prosecutors say Behenna [an officer who was also involved in the incident with Warner] later shot the detainee.

Normally, if he had done this to a US citizen back in the US of A (most states, anyway), Mr. Warner would be tried as a murderer. He might have been allowed to plea bargain down to a voluntary manslaughter charge in exchange for testimony against his confederate. But this was only an Iraqi prisoner, so Warner gets off with one year for simple assault. Iraqi lives, especially the lives of prisoners in US custody don’t really matter as much. Besides Warner was a “good soldier,” so we should cut him some slack:

“Staff Sgt. Warner knew what he was doing,” Poirier said. “He knew he was doing it to a person at his mercy.”

Madrinan said Warner’s long service record earned him a second chance.

“On one occassion, on his third tour in Iraq, Sgt. Warner lost sight of what he’s supposed to do,” Madrinan said.

Warner, 35, told Dixon he could “be a good soldier again.”

“I know I need to be punished,” Warner said. “I should have been stronger. I know I wasn’t.”

Warner’s sentence is less severe than the six years confinement, demotion and dishonorable discharge sought by prosecutors.

Well, at least Warner has agreed to testify at the upcoming trial of his good friend (and the trigger man) Lt. Behenna:

As part of his plea agreement, Warner agreed to testify in any future cases related to the incident. One of Warner’s attorneys, Capt. Pete Madrinan, said Warner will testify next week at Behenna’s trial.

I can’t wait to see what happens to Lt. Behenna. My guess? Well, based on past experience with military courts who have tried other soldiers for homicides, one can assume Behenna probably won’t receive the maximum penalty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice should he be convicted. Let’s look at some past cases, shall we?

(cont.)
In the case of two Afghanistan civilians, Habibullah and Dilawar, who were tortured to death at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility at Bagram Air Force Base, the military brought court martial charges against 15 soldiers for abuse of prisoners. Only seven were soldiers convicted of any charges. The only person charged with responsibility for Dilawar and Habibullah deaths was Pfc. Willie V. Brand. He was acquitted of the most serious charges (manslaughter) and served no prison time for his conviction for abusing Dilawar, even though he could have been sentenced to 16 years in a military prison.

The closest the prosecution team came to assigning responsibility for the deaths were charges of involuntary manslaughter, maiming and other crimes against one of the military policemen, Specialist Willie V. Brand. He had spoken openly with Army investigators long after others had invoked their right to remain silent, and the story he told was chilling. By his own admission, Specialist Brand, then 24, had repeatedly struck both of the detainees who died, kneeing them in the thigh with a technique that some of the unit’s reservists had taught to others.

Specialist Brand had told investigators that he kneed Mr. Dilawar more than 30 times, because “I was fed up with him,” and added that he struck “a lot of other” detainees as well. He said “90 percent” of the other guards who worked the Bagram isolation cells on the night shift also used knee strikes, including some who struck Dilawar because they were amused to hear him cry out, “Allah!”

Army prosecutors described Specialist Brand’s actions as brutally excessive. But jurors also heard Mr. Boland, testifying for the defense, describe the “fuzzy” and “inadequate” training of the reservists.

The jurors also asked questions of their own, as they are allowed to do in courts-martial. Many of them centered on the guards’ rules for using force, how they were trained and how they were supervised. They also heard six other soldiers testify that they, too, had used knee strikes and had been trained to do so.

“To me what he did may have been a contributing factor” in Mr. Dilawar’s death, Colonel Simonelli, a juror in the case, said of Specialist Brand. “But was it the most important factor? Based on my limited knowledge, I cannot confirm that to be the case.”

The prosecutors did not mention the young wife and a 2-year-old daughter that Mr. Dilawar left behind, or that interrogators had concluded before his death that he was almost certainly innocent of any involvement in the rocket attack on the American base. The jury convicted Specialist Brand of maiming, assault, maltreatment and making a false statement and could have sentenced him to 16 years in a military prison. Instead, after hearing about his sick wife and their indigent family of four children, they declined even to give him a bad-conduct discharge. The most serious charge against him, involuntary manslaughter, was dropped before the trial began.

Even Specialist Brand’s civilian lawyer, John P. Galligan, said he was stunned by the sentence: his client was reduced in rank to private, but not jailed or fined; he left the Army with an honorable discharge.

He was later granted an honorable discharge. The most severe sentence any Bagram soldier received for abusing prisoners received was only five months detention. So, killing and abusing prisoners at Bagram did not merit much punishment for the soldiers responsible in the eyes of the military tribunals which heard these cases.

Okay, but what about the soldiers charged with murder and rape of an Iraqi family in the Mahmudiyah killings? In that case a platoon of soldiers had raped and murdered an adolescent girl and her family, then tried to cover up their crimes by burning the families home where the bodies where located. Of the five soldiers charged with crimes connected to the rape and murders, two pled guilty and were sentenced to 100 years and 110 years, respectively, with parole possible after 10 years, one was sentenced to 90 years with the possibility of parole only after serving 20 years, and one was sentenced to 27 months imprisonment. Steven D. Green, the soldier alleged to be most responsible for the crimes is currently set to stand trial on April 27, 2009 and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Green had been expected to claim temporary insanity, but has recently decided to abandon that defense.

It will be interesting to see if Lt. Behenna’s case is treated more like the military guards who escaped significant penalties for killing prisoners at Bagram, or if the full weight of the military justice system will come down on his head as in the case of the soldiers involved in the Mahmudiyah rape and murders. For example, Behenna will not face the death penalty, though his murder of the prisoner in his custody allegedly was just as cold blooded as the murders committed by Steven Green and company. If I had to guess, I’d bet he’ll be allowed to plead to manslaughter charges. We’ll just have to wait and see.