This has to be one of the saddest and most maddening of stories to be produced by the American Occupation of Iraq to date:
Two U.S. soldiers could face murder charges in a military trial in Baghdad for shooting and killing a severely wounded Iraqi teenager who had been mistaken for an insurgent by American troops, The Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site.
The newspaper said on Thursday that the two army staff sergeants had admitted that they had shot the Iraqi boy as he lay moaning on the ground but that they had said they did so out of mercy.
A total of seven Iraqis were killed in the incident in August in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, in which U.S. troops fired on a garbage truck on Aug. 18 after mistakenly concluding that it was planting roadside bombs, the newspaper said, quoting Iraqi witnesses and U.S. military officials.
The two soldiers told U.S. officials that they had killed the teenager to “put him out of his misery,” the paper said.
But Iraqi witnesses, including a relative of the boy who had pleaded for U.S. troops to help him, were said to be enraged by the killing.
The teenager was shot as U.S. medics rushed to treat a half dozen or so of those wounded on Aug. 18 when the garbage truck was fired upon and bust into flames.
Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban, 29, of Carson, California, and Staff Sergeant Johnny Horne Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, both of 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, face military court proceedings in Baghdad to determine if there is enough evidence for court martial, the newspaper reported.
If convicted, they could receive the death penalty.
The army said it was unable to identify the boy who was killed. But citing Iraqi witnesses, The Los Angeles Times identified him as Qassim Hassan, 16, who had been working the night shift on the garbage truck with his brother and several cousins.
They shot him “out of mercy” to “put him out of his misery” in front of his screaming family and medics who could have helped him. This, after they fired on his garbage truck “by mistake.”