GI Pleads Guilty to Mistreating Detainee

[brooklynite]

FORT BLISS, Texas - A military intelligence soldier pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that she mistreated a detainee in Afghanistan who later died.

Sgt. Selena M. Salcedo pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty and assault, two of four charges that she faced. Military prosecutors dropped the other two related charges against her as part of the plea agreement.

Salcedo admitted that she mistreated a man called Dilawar, whom the military was holding as a prisoner at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan. She faces up to a year in prison, a bad conduct discharge, loss of a year's pay, and a reduction in rank to private. Sentencing was to begin later Thursday.

Salcedo said that while questioning Dilawar on Dec. 8, 2002, she kicked him, grabbed his head and forced him against a wall several times.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050804/ap_on_re_us/afghanistan_prisoner_abuse
- - -
A year in prison and loss of pay? That'll teach her...

[Rose Siding]

1. Here's some more background on Dilawar's death

NYT ran a front page piece in May.

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000929313

snip>
The file also details sworn statements from soldiers about a woman interrogator who stepped on one prisoner's neck and kicked another in the genitals. Other reported abuses include a prisoner forced to pick plastic bottle tops out of a drum mixed with excrement and water.

Today’s piece was described as the first of two articles on this subject.

The Times obtained a copy of the 2,000-page confidential report of the Army's investigation into the deaths -- which took place at a detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, in December 2002 -- “from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths," the paper said.

According to the report, one of the two men -- known to the Army only as Dilawar -- died after being chained by his wrists to the ceiling of his cell for four days. The piece ends, dramatically, with the comment from a U.S. Army sergeant named Yonushonis, that before Dilawar's death “most of us were convinced that the detainee was innocent.”

Before his death, however, he was interrogated repeatedly, and his legs were beaten so badly that a coroner later said they "had basically been pulpified," the Times reported.

[matcom]

2. 1 year for Murder

:eyes:

[VegasWolf]

3. People get more time than that for stealing a potato from mess hall. nt

[Benhurst]

4. All I can say is

9/11 :cry: That covers and excuses anything.
:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

I wonder why we are so hated.

[gratuitous]

5. "Mistreating" a detainee who "later" died

Makes it sound like she gave him the wrong salad fork or something, doesn't it? And maybe later he choked on his lemon chicken and there was no one around to give him the Heimlich maneuver.

I'm so glad that the AP is here to sanitize U.S. torture and murder.

[knowbody0]

6. may his spirit haunt her for the rest of her days

[Judi Lynn]

8. I fervently agree. War doesn't force people to become monsters.

There are too many examples of men and women who simply wouldn't allow themselves to take advantage of others like that, given the same opportunities:

The John McCain of this report is an uneducated Afghan villager known as Dilawar, who was sent by his mother to pick up his sisters for a Muslim holiday on Dec. 5, 2002. Before he got there, Dilawar was rounded up as a suspect in a rocket attack.

For much of his five days in custody, Dilawar was brutalized and hung from the ceiling of his cell, even though no one thought he was a terrorist or had any useful information. Military police took turns kicking him above the knee because they found it amusing to hear him cry out "Allah."

When he was too weak to follow orders during interrogations, one sergeant grabbed him by his beard, crushed his bare foot with her boot and then reared back and kicked him in the groin.

That night, an interrogator summoned an MP when he noticed Dilawar's head slumped forward in his hood and his hands limp in his chains. After pressing his fingernail to see that blood was still circulating, the MP left him there. On Dec. 10, dragged in for what would be his last interrogation, Dilawar was incoherent. Angry at his unresponsiveness, an interrogator held him upright by twisting his hood around his neck. An intelligence specialist who spoke Dilawar's Pashto dialect was disturbed enough to notify the officer in charge. It was too late. Dilawar was already dead.

Were the Vietnamese guards who savagely beat McCain any worse?
(snip/...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-carlson2jun02,0,2230963.column?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
(Free registration required)

[pocket]

7. Turn her over to the victim's tribe for trial

not one year in a cushy American jail

[Disturbed]

9. Sadists don't need training.

The U.S. Military, The CIA and Mercs hire sadists to torture and kill people. When they can not avoid prosecuting their hired sadists they give them light sentences.

[rainbow4321]

10. Update: No jail time....

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8BP8C4G1.html


A military intelligence soldier was reduced in rank but will serve no prison time after pleading guilty Thursday to charges of mistreating a detainee in Afghanistan who later died.

Sgt. Selena M. Salcedo tearfully apologized to the military judge before he issued his sentence, which also included a reduction in rank to corporal or specialist, a letter of reprimand and forfeiture of $250 a month for four months.

"I just want to apologize to my mother for making her go through this and to you for being in your court," said Salcedo, 24, who pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty and assault. "I'm a better soldier than that."

Military prosecutors dropped two related charges as part of the plea agreement. She could have faced up to a year in prison, a bad conduct discharge, loss of a year's pay, and a reduction in rank to private. The only guarantee in her plea agreement was that she would not serve more than four months in jail.