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IRAQ WAR -
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Fort Carson Captain Convicted In Iraqi Assaults

Posted in the database on Saturday, March 19th, 2005 @ 17:35:45 MST (1346 views)
from uruknet  

Untitled Document FORT CARSON, Colo., March 17, 2005 -- An Army captain accused of terrorizing an Iraqi town's residents with threats, a pistol and a baseball bat was convicted Wednesday of three counts of assault on Iraqis, but acquitted of charges stemming from an alleged assault of one of his own soldiers.

Shawn L. Martin had faced a total of eight counts of assault. A jury of seven officers found Martin innocent of charges of aggravated assault, obstruction of justice and conduct unbecoming of an officer after seven hours of deliberations.

Martin was convicted for three assaults: one that happened at a police station; another on a firefighter who responded when a Humvee was damaged by a land mine; and a case involving a welder taken out to the desert and told to give information on weapons caches or start digging his own grave.

The same jury that convicted Martin will decide his sentence when it reconvenes Thursday. Martin's defense could present witnesses to ask for clemency.

Martin had faced up to 44 1/2 years in prison and loss of his military pension if convicted of all charges. He now faces up to 6 months in prison for each assault and battery conviction stemming from the assaults at the police station and on the firefighter. He faces up to 8 years in prison on an aggravated assault conviction on the welder.

Martin also faces possible dismissal from the military and ordered to forfeit pay.

Defense lawyer John Galligan said Martin was pleased with the verdict.

"The panel exonerated him of assaulting another soldier and conduct unbecoming of an officer," Galligan said.

Maj. Tiernan Dolan, the prosecutor, declined comment after the hearing. During closing arguments Dolan said, "Thinking you can do anything you want to an Iraqi detainee is what this case is about."

First Lt. David Minor, who had turned Martin in, said he didn't want to comment on the outcome of the case.

"Probably what I would have to say would be unprintable," he said.

Witnesses testified that Martin kicked and screamed at Iraqi civilians, threatened to shoot detainees, pointed a gun at the head of one of his sergeants and told another soldier not to discuss what he had seen.

In his closing statement, Dolan likened Martin to a small-town sheriff who ruled the Iraqi town of Ar Rutbah with a baseball bat and his 9-mm pistol.

"He's a captain in the U.S. Army. He's not Buford Pusser from some small town, walking tall," said Dolan, referring to the 1973 movie "Walking Tall."

Defense attorney Galligan accused the Army of conducting a sloppy investigation, saying prosecutors couldn't even name the Iraqis Martin was accused of attacking.

He said Martin wasn't given adequate resources to supervise Ar Rutbah, a town of 25,000 in the western Iraqi desert.

"These decisions were made in a war, a new kind of war we are still learning from," Galligan said in his closing statement.

Army rules require a two-thirds majority of the jury to convict. The jurors are all majors or higher.

The alleged attacks took place from May to July 2003 at Ar Rutbah, where Martin was the senior officer. He took the stand Tuesday and denied misconduct.

"I never intended and never committed any violent offense against anyone," he said.

Prosecution witnesses said Martin put a pistol in the face of Sgt. Robert Cureton and ordered him to fire over the head of an Iraqi detainee. Others said he ordered a sergeant to beat up an Iraqi detainee who had insisted he didn't know anything about an attack on U.S. forces.

Martin admitted he had carried a baseball bat that a witness described as his "Iraqi beater" and had once prodded a detainee with it. But he denied clubbing anyone with the bat, and he said all soldiers in Iraq had some form of nonlethal weapon because they could not shoot people for throwing rocks at them.

Four enlisted men testified they had never seen Martin threaten Iraqis with his pistol or beat anyone with the bat.

Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.



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