BAGHDAD — As a military court prepares to try the last of three U.S. snipers on murder charges, the soldiers have accused their commanding officers of pushing to expand rules of engagement to produce more "kills" and then abandoning them when they were accused of murder.
Two soldiers already have been acquitted of murder, but found guilty on lesser charges.
The third, Army Sgt. Evan Vela, faces a pretrial hearing Tuesday, seven months to the day after he shot at close range a man who had wandered into a sniper camp. The area, 30 miles south of Baghdad, was rife with Sunni militants.
Vela alleges that investigators changed the statement he made to them, and that a military lawyer urged him to waive his right to a hearing -- which he only won back on appeal. Vela has acknowledged that he shot the man, but said he was only doing his job and criticized his commanders for not looking out for him.
"It seems like when they should have had my back, they let me down," Vela said in an interview.
At Tuesday's hearing, Vela's lawyers hope to have the statement thrown out. They say they will ask that he be released from confinement in Kuwait, and that the trial, scheduled to start Jan. 28, be moved to Ft. Richardson, Alaska, where Vela's battalion is based.
According to court testimony and interviews, Vela's sniper unit was revamped in spring after the 1st Battalion of the 25th Infantry Division's 501st Regiment suffered a number of casualties in the Jurf Sakhar region. By June, as many as 20 soldiers had been killed.
In an interview, the unit's leader, Sgt. Michael S. Hensley, who was acquitted of murder charges, said that Sgt. Maj. Bernie Knight brought him in to get more kills.
"The reason I am doing this is I want to start killing some bad guys, I want to increase our kill ratio," Hensley said Knight told him.
Hensley said he agreed on the condition that he would run the section by himself and report directly to the battalion commander. The unit expanded from seven to 13 men. Knight and Lt. Col. Robert Balcavage pushed the soldiers to become more aggressive, Hensley said.
"Balcavage and Knight, they would throw out their things like, 'You guys don't need to worry if you feel threatened for a second, don't hesitate to engage.' "
Knight and Balcavage refused to comment for this article. Their commander, Col. Michael Garrett, said they had done nothing wrong. "We were all under pressure fighting an elusive enemy," he said.
