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Fort Campbell, Kentucky: A US
soldier was sentenced Thursday to 100 years in prison for his role
in the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the slaying
of her family.
Sgt. Paul
Cortez, 24, admitted he was among five soldiers who plotted the
March 2006 rape and murders in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, while
they were drinking gin and whiskey and playing cards at a traffic
checkpoint.
Cortez was in
tears as members of his 101st Airborne unit testified on his behalf
ahead of sentencing Thursday.
“I’m sorry
I let you guys down, you guys treat me better than this,” he said.
He also
apologized to his two brothers and parents in the courtroom
audience: “I love you guys, I’m sorry for what I did.”
Cortez was
convicted of conspiracy to rape, rape, four counts of murder and
other charges including violating a general order by drinking.
Premeditation
Cortez was the
second soldier to plead guilty in the high-profile case, one in a
series of incidents that have tarnished the reputation of US forces
in Iraq.
The military
judge in the court-martial here first sentenced him Thursday to life
in prison without parole, as well as a dishonorable discharge.
But the judge
then acknowledged that, under a plea bargain overseen by the
commanding general of the 101st Airborne, Cortez could only be
sentenced to 100 years imprisonment, which under military law allows
the possibility of parole after 10 years.
The case
shocked many by accounts that the soldiers calmly plotted to violate
a young girl they had seen walking down the street in the Iraqi
village and deliberately tried cover up their crime by killing her
family and setting their house alight.
They decided
Abeer Kassem Hamza al-Janabi would make a good target for the plan
to “have sex with an Iraqi female” because her father was the
only man in the house, Cortez told a military court.
Gang rape
In a statement
frequently interrupted by tears, Cortez described how a fellow
soldier pinned the girl to the ground and held her down while he
raped her. Cortez then held al-Janabi down as an accomplice,
Specialist James Barker, raped her.
Barker also
avoided the death penalty as part of a plea deal last November in
which he was sentenced to 90 years in prison and agreed to cooperate
with prosecutions of the other soldiers.
Two other
soldiers, Private First Class Jesse Spielman and Private First Class
Bryan Howard, are awaiting courts-martial in the case, while a
fifth, accused ringleader Steve Green, who was discharged from the
army before the case came to light, will be tried in federal court
at a later date.
During the
trial Cortez said he heard about four or five gunshots from the
bedroom where Green had taken the girl’s parents, Kassem Hamza
Rachid al-Janabi and Fakhriya Taha Mohsine al-Janabi and
six-year-old sister, Hadeel Kassem Hamza al-Janabi.
“After
Barker was done, Green came out of the bedroom and said he had
killed them all and all of them were dead,” Cortez told the court.
Cortez watched
as Green raped the girl and then shot her in the head. Barker then
covered her body with a blanket and tossed a lighter to one of the
other soldiers who set the blanket alight. The house was soon
engulfed in flames.
 --AFP
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