BAGHDAD — U.S. Army Sgt. Evan Vela stood stone-faced Sunday as a court-martial jury sentenced him to 10 years in prison for fatally shooting an Iraqi man.
Vela, who had faced a maximum life sentence, was convicted earlier in the day of murder, making a false statement and planting a weapon in relation to the May 11 killing. The Army withheld his pay and benefits over the death of the Iraqi, who had stumbled into the hide-out of Vela's five-man sniper team. Vela, 24, will receive a dishonorable discharge.
Vela's wife, Alyssa Carnahan, wept as the verdict ended the last of the three cases involving Iraqis killed by the sniper section of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment. Two other soldiers were acquitted of murder charges in the May 11 shooting and deaths the month before, but were convicted on lesser charges and demoted.
Outside the courthouse, the brother of Ghani Naser Janabi, the man killed by Vela, rejoiced at the ruling. "It is proof that my brother is not guilty. It was the sergeant," Fadl Janabi said.
Vela's lawyers contend that battalion leaders had pressured the snipers to get more kills. "They were picked as the hand of the battalion to return the blow," said attorney James Culp, alluding to the high casualty rate in the battalion.
Culp argued that Vela, physically exhausted and sleep deprived, opened fire on instinct when his superior, Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, commanded him to shoot.
Hensley told the court Friday that he had ordered Vela to kill the Iraqi because the detainee was making too much noise and might draw militants to their hidden camp in Jarf Sakhr, a village southwest of Baghdad where U.S. soldiers were conducting a counterinsurgency operation.
The prosecution said Vela was responsible for the death no matter how tired he was or how weak his emotional state. The sentence delivered a message that soldiers must be held accountable for their actions in Iraq, prosecutors said.
"What is a human life worth? That is what Sgt. Vela took," prosecutor Maj. Charles Kuhfuhl told the court as it decided sentencing.
Iraq's human rights minister, Wijdan Salim, attended the trial Friday, making it clear that the government cared about such cases after previous trials of soldiers on charges of killing or abusing Iraqis had resulted in dismissals or light sentences.
