By IRNA,
Berlin : A US martial court in the south German town of Vilseck sentenced a soldier to life for premeditated murder in connection with the deaths of Iraqi prisoners from two separate incidents in early 2007, German media reports said Saturday.
The 26-year army medic, Sergeant Michael Leahy Jr., was convicted of premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder in the deaths of four Iraqi detainees in March 2007 following nearly five hours of deliberations by a military jury.
Leahy will be imprisoned for now at the US Army’s detention facility in the southwestern German city of Mannheim.
There is a strong likelihood that Leahy will be required to testify at the
court-martial of several soldiers who are yet to be tried for the gruesome crime, according to Leahy’s attorney Frank Spinner.
Leahy was convicted for his role in the March 2007 incident, of shooting two of four Iraqi detainees who were bound, blindfolded and killed execution-style next to a Baghdad canal.
Spinner said the dossier will automatically be sent to the military’s appeals court
in Washington, D.C.
At least 15 soldiers were at or near the site of the killings, according to witnesses’ recollections of the incident.
All the accused were deployed at the US military base in the southern town of Schweinfurt.
Tens of thousands of US troops from Germany have been sent to take part in American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past eight years.
Germany is also a major logistic hub for global US military missions and so-called
‘anti-terror’ operations.