Blog #9: Soldier accused of killing Afghan citizens to stand trial

Keena Wilson

24 March 2011

Soldier accused of killing Afghan citizens to stand trial

Blog # 9

Soldiers hold the title of being the protectors of this country. Some may call them patriots and heroes. And some of them are, but this article made me think somewhat different. There is a trial of a soldier accused of killing Afghan citizens for sport. Spc. Jeremy Morlock is one of two U.S. soldiers who are scheduled to be tried on Wednesday at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington. He is charged with three counts of murder. He is accused of killing one Afghan civilian in January 2010 with a grenade and rifle; killing another in May 2010 in a similar manner; and shooting a third to death in February 2010. The second solider Pfc. Andrew Holmes is also facing charges in the case but a start date for his court martial has not been publicly announced. Both of the soldiers are part of a larger case that involves several other soldiers, all accused of similar killings. Officials have charged 12 U.S. soldiers with what they call a conspiracy to kill Afghan civilians and cover it up; along with charges they mutilated corpses and kept grisly souvenirs. Morlock was the first to face an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing. If convicted, Morlock faces a maximum punishment of imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole, the military said. The second soldier, Holmes, is charged with the premeditated deaths of three civilians, possessing a dismembered human finger, wrongfully possessing photographs of human casualties and smoking hashish. Holmes is also accused of conspiring with Morlock to shoot at a civilian and then toss a grenade so it would look like the soldiers were under attack. Several of the soldiers are charged with taking pictures of the corpses, and one soldier is charged with stabbing a corpse. A German news outlet Der Spiegel published photographs of what they identified as Morlock and Holmes posing over the bodies of dead Afghan this week. The images showed the soldiers kneeling by a bloody body sprawled over a patch of sand and grass. A third shows two bodies propped up, back to back, against a post in front of a military vehicle. The U.S. Army released a statement Monday calling the photographs "repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States Army." "We apologize for the distress these photos cause," the statement said.

How anyone can do something as horrible as this I’ll never understand. This is a big social global issue. Other countries already hate the United States as it is and once this story reaches other countries, they will hate us even more. Something as horrible as this can backfire and cause the people from Afghanistan to retaliate. This will lead to the deaths of innocent soldiers as well as even more innocent Afghans. More deaths from either country are bad, but having soldiers who do thing like this to innocent people is worse. We should screen soldiers to see what they are capable of before we throw a gun in there hand and send them off to “fight.”

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/23/us.afghan.sport.killing/index.html