HILLA, Iraq: A US court decision sparing ex-soldier Steven Dale Green the death penalty for raping and murdering an Iraqi teenager after killing her family was met with anger by the girl’s relatives yesterday.
Green, 24, convicted of raping 14-year-old Abeer Al-Janabi and killing her and her father, mother and six-year-old sister, will be sentenced to life in prison after a jury late on Thursday failed to agree on whether he should be executed.
According to testimony during the eight-day trial, Green shot the girl’s family in a bedroom while two soldiers raped her. Green then took his turn raping the girl, covered her head with a pillow and shot her three times. The soldiers then set fire to her body to try to cover up the crime.
Green later bragged about the assault, saying what he had done was “awesome.”
The trial was held in Kentucky because the soldiers were assigned out of Fort Campbell in that state.
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for Green found guilty by the same jury two weeks ago of committing the 2006 crimes near Baghdad.
But after two days of deliberations, the jury of nine women and three men could not decide if he should be executed or given life without parole, so the life sentence prevailed.
Judge Thomas Russell of the US District Court in Paducah, Kentucky, who presided over the trial, will issue the sentence on Sept. 4.
Prosecutors said Green was the ringleader of a gang of five soldiers who plotted to invade the home of the family of four to rape the girl.
Green, 19 at the time of the crime, was described as the trigger-man in the group who donned black “ninja” outfits.
The rape-murders took place after the soldiers drank whiskey, played cards, and plotted the attack in Mahmudiya, 30 km south of Baghdad.
“American courts showed their bias and injustice and did not issue the correct verdict that all religious values and moral norms demand,” said Abdullah Al-Janabi, 35, a relative of the slain girl.
Umm Amer Al-Janabi, 45, also lambasted the jury. “The punishment should have been the severest possible against this criminal. We will never forgive him,” she said.
“What the American soldier did is a terrorist act and he deserves execution,” said Ahmed Samir Jaber, 27, a mechanic, from underneath the bonnet of an old car he was fixing in Mahmudiya, a dusty trading town on the edge of the desert. “The court has not delivered justice. If I had killed an American girl, the American court would have executed me.”
Green named as the ringleader in the March 2006 atrocity, was tried as a civilian because the army had discharged him due to a “personality disorder” before his role in the crime came to light.
Three other soldiers were given life sentences for the attack.
After the jurors’ decision was read out, representatives of Abeer’s family openly wept in court.
