Nine children among 16 dead after US serviceman attacks villagers

[davidbfpo]

I wonder how Americans would respond if the circumstances in this incident were replicated in the USA?

An Afghan service man, a a trusted veteran on a training course, walks out of a military base, commits murders and then walks back inside the base to surrender. Incidentally I'm sure the laws in place would mean court proceedings in the USA. Now imagine if the Afghan-USA visiting forces agreement means the suspect is flown back to Kabul for any prosecution.

Someone here may know of incidents involving off-base serious criminality by US personnel who appeared before a local court. My memory only has the low-flying training flight in the Italian Alps where cable way wires were cut and a gondola fell, killing those aboard. The US pilots did not face Italian justice.

[tequila]

The only one I can think of is the 1995 gang rape of a Japanese girl on Okinawa by four Marines.

In this case, widespread Japanese outrage apparently led to the Marines being handed over to Japanese courts for justice.

After the incident became known, public outrage erupted, especially over the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement, which gives the U.S. the right of extraterritoriality (exemption from jurisdiction of local law). While the crime was committed off of a U.S. military base, the U.S. initially took the men into custody, but later handed them over to Japanese law enforcement to be tried.

According to the Status of Forces Agreement, article xvii (5) (c): "The custody of an accused member of the United States armed forces or the civilian component over whom Japan is to exercise jurisdiction shall, if he is in the hands of the United States, remain with the United States until he is charged." The suspects were on base restriction until the Japanese officials charged them with the crime. The outrage over the attack caused the largest anti-American demonstrations in Okinawa since the treaty was signed in 1960; there was particular acrimony with regard to the African-American ethnicity of the assailants. As a consequence of the protests regarding jurisprudence, the U.S. made concessions and agreed to consider handing suspects over to the Japanese before an indictment if the severity of the alleged crime indicated it. This agreement was hashed out at an emergency meeting between U.S. President Bill Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto. The people of Okinawa also placed a full-page ad in the New York Times decrying the rape and other aspects of the U.S. bases in Okinawa. In 1996, the United States and Japan signed a bilateral agreement to reduce the amount of land on Okinawa covered by U.S. bases by 21 percent—the U.S. military had previously occupied 19 percent of the island.

Gill pleaded guilty to the rape, and the other two men pleaded guilty to conspiracy.

Prosecutors had asked for the maximum sentences for the men, 10 years each. The judge—there were no juries in Japan at this point—gave Gill and Harp seven years; Ledet received six and a half years. Their families also paid "reparation money" to the family of the victim, a common practice in Japan.

The three men served prison terms in Japanese prisons and were released in 2003 and then given dishonorable discharges from the military. After release, Rodrico Harp decried prison conditions in Japan and said that the electronics assembly prison labor he was forced to do amounted to slave labor.[2]

[jmm99]

LINK and POST:



"Fighting donkey" (HT to OP)

Regards

Mike

[Ken White]

I wonder how Americans would respond if the circumstances in this incident were replicated in the USA?

With 330M different response...

Ranging from shooting the miscreant outright to giving him money and a medal and a ticket home...

In most nations where US Troops are stationed, there is a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which delineates in excruciating detail who will try or get custody of whom for what. Tequila mentioned one where the accused was turned over to local jurisdiction, there have been others in Japan (and Okinawa) and in Korea. There have been more in all those Nations where the US retained custody for one reason or another. Much depends on how the accusation is couched and the potential penalty foreseen by the local US Judge Advocate.

Much also depends on the whims of the US Congress -- if they get fired up and go into the "protect US citizens..." mode, they can influence both the US Armed Forces and Foreign governments. Some times they do that, sometimes they do not.

In those nations where troops are serving but no SOFA exists, the US retains jurisdiction. Thus it did in Iraq for almost all our time there and IIRC, one of the sticking points in our continued presence there was a failure to arrive at a compromise for the SOFA. There is no SOFA with Afghanistan to my knowledge -- nor, I suspect is there likely to be one...

The ICJ of course, is based on the premise that signatory nations have the responsibility and right to conduct their own investigations and / or trials...

Most Nations do pretty much the same thing. IIRC, the accusations of Forces mistreatment of Iraqis in Basra resulted in trials in the UK as it appears will this one (LINK). I seem to recall a Spaniard and some Danes who also went home for trials...

Power rules, rightly or wrongly...

Added: Oops. Omitted two links:

LINK.

LINK.