Servicemember gets 35 years in Iraqi detainee deaths

[bigtree]

Monday, March 30, 2009

VILSECK, Germany — A 172nd Infantry Brigade soldier was sentenced to 35 years’ confinement at a court-martial Monday after he pleaded guilty to the murder of four Iraqi detainees, whose bodies were dumped in a Baghdad canal in 2007.

Sgt. 1st Class Joseph P. Mayo, 27, who waived his right to a jury trial and elected to be tried by a military judge alone, admitted in court to shooting one of the four men in March or April 2007.

Mayo and two other former members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment — Sgt. Michael Leahy Jr., 28, and Master Sgt. John Hatley, 40 — were accused of shooting the detainees after capturing them with a large cache of weapons and ammunition.

Mayo pleaded guilty to premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit premeditated murder. The judge sentenced him to life in prison with the possibility of parole, reduction to private and a dishonorable discharge. However, the sentence was reduced to 35 years’ confinement under a pretrial agreement that will see him testify at Hatley’s murder trial in April. Mayo’s attorney said the pretrial agreement allows for parole after 10 years.


read: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=61700

[sakabatou]

1. Only 35 years?

:wtf:

[fascisthunter]

2. yet Cheney and Bush walk free....