CAMP SPEICHER, Iraq (AFP) — A pre-trial hearing was held on Saturday for a US soldier charged with murdering an Iraqi detainee by shooting him and then burning him with an incendiary grenade, in the latest scandal to rock the military in Iraq.
Staff Sergeant Hal Warner from Oklahoma has been charged along with First Lieutenant Michael Behenna with the premeditated murder of Ali Mansur Mohammed, as well as assault, making a false official statement and obstruction of justice.
Mohammed was killed after he was detained by the two soldiers in May.
The hearing for Warner, who is on his second deployment to Iraq, was held at Camp Speicher, a US base near executed dictator Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
Behenna's hearing is set for September 20.
The charges against the pair follow an investigation into the death of Mohammed, initially believed to have been released by coalition forces on or about May 16.
An AFP correspondent at Camp Speicher said Warner, 34, was accused of arresting Mohammed at his house in Tikrit on May 5, and of beating him up.
According to the prosecution, Mohammed had been expected to be freed along with another detainee and dropped off at a checkpoint manned by local members of a group fighting Al-Qaeda, but that the soldiers kept him in captivity.
The charges state that Warner and Behenna shot Mohammed on May 16 and set his body on fire in the back of a military vehicle by using a thermite grenade which burns fiercely but does not explode.
The grenade was placed under Mohammed's head.
The first witness, a local police officer, said Mohammed's body was found in a tunnel under a bridge on May 17.
The body was naked, partly burnt on the head and lying in a pool of blood, the officer said, adding that the body was still warm.
Corporal Cody Atkinson, one of the witnesses and part of Behenna's battalion, said Behenna and Warner took Mohammed out of the vehicle and under a bridge before he was to be released.
"We stopped at the (Sahwa) checkpoint and dropped one of the two detainees ... Warner was wondering why Ali Mansur was still in the vehicle," he said indicating that Warner was probably unaware of a plan by Behenna to kill Mohammed.
He said the two then took Mansur under the bridge.
"I saw they took a grenade. The lieutenant and Warner came back, five to 10 minutes later. When he came back Lieutenant Behenna did not say anything about it. Later on he told us more and made some joke about a grenade, saying it was like a steak," Atkinson said.
"We all thought that we were going to jail for this. Sergeant Warner told us to write that Ali Mansur had been released."
When Atkinson was asked whether Warner told him if Behenna killed Mohammed, he answered "Yes".
Sergeant Milton Sanchez testified that Behenna told him Mohammed was a "bad guy".
"I know he (Behenna) was mad. He did not think that we should release him. He thought we were wrong to drop this detainee," Sanchez said.
An Iraqi doctor named Aswad, who performed the autopsy on Mohammed, said the victim was killed by one bullet to the head and another to the chest.
He also confirmed that 15 to 20 percent of his upper body was burnt.
Lieutenant Justin Johnson, part of the investigating team, testified that Sanchez came to him and said the battalion had "left with two detainees but dropped only one at the checkpoint."
"One soldier told me that Behenna walked with Ali Mansur underneath the railroad, that he heard two gunshots, and that he had reasons to believe that Behenna killed Ali Mansur," Johnson said.
The incident occurred near the oil refinery town of Baiji where the soldiers' D Company, 1st Battalion is based.
The US military has been rocked by a series of scandals in Iraq, including the notorious Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004 and several allegations of rape or murder.
The most serious allegations of unlawful killings came when a group of marines were accused of murdering 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha in November 2005 after a roadside bomb killed a comrade.
A total of eight marines were charged the following year, but most of them have either been acquitted or had charges withdrawn before court martial.
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