Five US soldiers charged in Iraq rape-murder case

The identity card obtained by Reuters shows Abeer's birth date as August 19 1991. Picture / Reuters

BAGHDAD - Five US soldiers have been charged in a rape and multiple murder case in Iraq, as documents obtained by Reuters showed the rape victim was aged 14, and not over 20 as US officials have said.

Days after former private Steven Green was charged as a civilian in a US court with rape and four murders, four serving soldiers were charged with the same offences, the US military said in statement. It did not name the troops.

Another soldier, apparently a sixth member of Green's former unit in the 502nd Infantry Regiment, was charged on Saturday with dereliction of duty for not reporting the crime in March.

All five were charged with conspiring with Green, accused by US prosecutors of going with three others to a house near the checkpoint they were manning outside Mahmudiya, near Baghdad, and of killing a couple and their two daughters. The five could face the death penalty.

Court documents described the raped daughter as an "adult female" and estimated her age as 25. US military officials in Iraq say their documents have her as 20. Local officials and relatives had said she was 15 or 16.

Her identity card and a copy of her death certificate obtained by Reuters, however, show she was 14.

Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi was born on August 19, 1991 in Baghdad, according to the identity card, provided to Reuters by a relative.

A copy of her death certificate, dated March 13, gives the same birth date. She was found at home by a relative on March 12 and had died from "gunshot wounds to the head, with burns", said the document, signed by doctor Wael Habib and a registrar.

No independent verification of the documents was immediately available. Abeer's sister Hadeel was aged six when she died of "several gunshot wounds".

Since revelations in March of a US probe into whether Marines killed 24 people at Haditha, Mahmudiya is the fifth case of serious crime being investigated by the US military. In all, 16 soldiers have been charged with murder in the past month or so - as many as in the previous three years of fighting.

Green, 21, has since been discharged from the army due to a "personality disorder".

A soldier cited in US court documents as the first witness told investigators Green and three others drank alcohol and discussed rape. They then told the soldier to keep watch on the radio as they set off for the house, some in civilian clothes.

Two soldiers who said they went to the house accused Green of killing the parents and child before he and the other soldier in the home raped Abeer. Green then shot her too, they said.

A sixth unidentified soldier is mentioned in court papers as discussing the case later with the first witness at their base.

The death certificate makes no mention of rape, a taboo subject in Iraq.
Some relatives have said they would not object to exhuming the dead for forensic tests, a religiously sensitive process.

Abeer's 34-year-old father Qasim Hamza Rasheed al-Janabi, whose five-year-old ID card photograph shows a slim, dark man with a moustache, was a labourer who died of a "smashing of the head due to gunshot wounds", his death certificate said.

His wife, Fakhriya Taha Muheisin al-Janabi, was 43 when she died of "several wounds". All four certificates gave the time of death as 2.00pm on March 12, possibly referring to when the bodies were found by Mehdi Obeid Salih, Fakhriya's cousin.

Two sons, aged 13 and 10, survived because they were absent from the house at the time.

- REUTERS