A soldier from the 101st Airborne Division is scheduled to plead guilty next Tuesday to a reduced charge for mercy killing in connection with the death of three unarmed Iraqi men shot by American infantrymen last spring, according to lawyers for other defendants in the case.
The terms of the plea arrangement will allow the soldier, Specialist Juston R. Graber, originally charged with capital murder, to be convicted of aggravated assault and to receive a nine-month prison sentence in exchange for his testifying against three other members of his squad, the lawyers said.
The three other soldiers, members of the same company as Specialist Graber in the division’s Third Brigade, still face courts-martial on premeditated-murder charges, making them eligible for the death penalty or, barring that, life in prison. Army prosecutors have accused them of carrying out an impromptu plan, following a raid on a marshy island northwest of Baghdad, to kill the three Iraqis after cutting off their plastic handcuffs and forcing them to run, still blindfolded, from the squalid hut where they had been discovered.
The two soldiers accused of firing on the men as they fled — Specialist William B. Hunsaker and Pfc. Corey R. Clagett — have said they shot in self-defense after the three broke free from the thin “zip-tie” handcuffs and attacked them.
Found on Angry Arab Newservice
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