From Holden:
One of the troops I don’t support is U.S. Army Capt. Rogelio “Roger” Maynulet currently on trial in Germany.
A U.S. Army tank company commander told a military court Wednesday that he shot a gravely wounded but unarmed Iraqi man “to put him out of his misery” and said the killing was “honorable.”
Taking the stand for the first time, Capt. Rogelio “Roger” Maynulet, 30, described the events that led him to fire twice upon the Iraqi, maintaining that the man was too badly injured to survive.
“He was in a state that I didn’t think was justified — I had to put him out of his misery,” Maynulet said. He argued that the killing “was the right thing to do, it was the honorable thing to do.”
If you think that the shots that originally wounded the Iraqi man were fired by Captain Maynulet’s company in self-defense – well, you are just plain wrong.
Maynulet’s 1st Armored Division tank company had been on patrol near Kufa when it was alerted to a car thought to be carrying a driver for radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and another militiaman loyal to the Shiite cleric.
They chased the vehicle and fired at it, wounding both the passenger, who fled and was later apprehended, and the driver. The killing was filmed by a U.S. drone surveillance aircraft.
Maynulet has some strange ideas about the Geneva Conventions…
Maynulet is being tried on a charge of assault with intent to commit murder in the May 21, 2004, killing near Kufa, south of Baghdad. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and his lawyers have argued that his actions were in line with the Geneva Conventions on the code of war.
…which are also just plain wrong.
CHAPTER II
Wounded and Sick
Article 12. Members of the armed forces and other persons mentioned in the following Article, who are wounded or sick, shall be respected and protected in all circumstances.
They shall be treated humanely and cared for by the Party to the conflict in whose power they may be, without any adverse distinction founded on sex, race, nationality, religion, political opinions, or any other similar criteria. Any attempts upon their lives, or violence to their persons, shall be strictly prohibited; in particular, they shall not be murdered or exterminated, subjected to torture or to biological experiments; they shall not willfully be left without medical assistance and care, nor shall conditions exposing them to contagion or infection be created.
Article 13. The present Convention shall apply to the wounded and sick belonging to the following categories:
(1) Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.
(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied.