Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Court Martial News - Monday, now Tuesday, Roundup

I was sorting through all of my News Alerts today and thought I would post some of the more interesting stories. The "D" in my DSL connection stands for Disney right now, so excuse any post that may be way behind the times.

  • Alleged fragging court-martial of Sgt. Alberto Martinez to begin on Tuesday. I had to link to this story from WRAL in Raleigh-Durham, here. See if you can spot the three major substantive/factual inaccuracies in the story. Other reporting here.
  • Another pseudo-frag court-martial alleges that Sgt. Joseph Bozicevich killed two superior NCOs. The case is headed to a likely Art. 32 hearing at Fort Stewart. See AP report here.
  • The Weemer and Nelson courts-martial took another turn as the government delayed the Nelson case in an attempt to, or at least as defense counsel described it, force Nelson to testify against Weemer. See AP report here. The two are charged with murdering Iraqi detainees in a house during the Battle for Fallujah. The alleged ring leader of the incident, Sgt. Luis Nazario, was acquitted after Weemer and Nelson refused to testify in his MEJA prosecution. While defense counsel are protesting the delay as a means to "intimidate" Nelson into testifying or face obstruction of justice charges, the situation was precipitated by the non-cooperation of the two after repeated grants of immunity.
  • Army Specialist Stephan A. Ribordy was sentenced on Thursday, Oct. 2, as reported by Stars and Stripes here. Ribordy pled guilty to acting as a lookout and assisting in discarding the bodies of four Iraqi detainees. The alleged shooters in the incident, senior NCOs from Ribordy's Company, are charged with premeditated murder. S&S described the eight month/BCD sentence as follows:
    The judge sentenced Ribordy to five years’ confinement but under a pretrial agreement — in which Ribordy agreed to testify in future trials in the case — the sentence was reduced to eight months.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What does "Fragging" cout marshall mean?