Traitors in the midst of our troops
CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait - A U.S. soldier could face the death penalty after an Army probe recommended Tuesday he be court-martialed in the Iraq war's first case of alleged "fragging."By pulling that crime against his fellow soldiers, Martinez has made himself as bad as the terrorists/dictators they're fighting. Simply atrocious. But it's not the first case in which a US army representative pulled an act of murder while serving overseas: back in 2003, when the war was in its beginning phases, there was another army sergeant who did something like that, and a Muslim to boot, whose name was Hasan Akbar, also mentioned in the article:
Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez of Troy, N.Y., had a "personal vendetta" against one of two higher-ranked officers who died in an explosion June 7 on a U.S. base near Tikrit, north of Baghdad, military investigator Col. Patrick Reinert said at the end of a two-day hearing in Kuwait.
Reinert said he found "reasonable cause" to believe that Martinez, 37, planted and detonated an anti-personnel mine in the window of a room used by Capt. Philip Esposito, 30, of Suffern, N.Y., and Lt. Louis E. Allen, 34 of Milford, Pa., in a former palace of Saddam Hussein's.
Three hand grenades were also allegedly used in the attack that killed the officers.
Reinert recommended that Martinez face a court-martial hearing and said he found aggravating factors that could allow for capital punishment if the case goes to a military tribunal.
The Tikrit case is the second during the Iraq war in which a U.S. soldier has been charged with killing his comrades, but it is believed to be the first of an American soldier in Iraq accused of killing his superiors.And deservedly so. These were murderers whom the US troops were and are still fighting, plying their sadist trade in the name of a religion of conquest, murder and deceit, and that "sergeant" called Akbar was bothered about that? Bleah.
In April, a sergeant in the Army's 101st Airborne Division, Hasan Akbar, was convicted of murder and attempted murder for a grenade and rifle attack that killed two officers and wounded 14 soldiers in Kuwait in 2003 during the opening days of the war in Iraq.
Akbar, 34, a Muslim, told investigators he carried out the attack because he was upset that American troops would kill fellow Muslims. He was sentenced to death.
While Sgt. Martinez's crime may have stemmed from motivations different from Sgt. Akbar's, what the former did is still just as offensive as what the latter did, and makes him a traitor, and for that he should be dealt with severely.
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Labels: military