US soldier sentenced to death
Pastor Dale Morgan
US soldier sentenced to death*
From correspondents in Washington
November 21, 2006 10:04am
Article from: AAP
A GENERAL has affirmed the death sentence for a US Army sergeant
convicted of murdering two fellow soldiers in a grenade attack in Kuwait
at the outset of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the army said today.
Sergeant Hasan Akbar, 35, is the first US soldier to face the death
penalty for killing another soldier since the end of the Vietnam War.
Lieutenant General John Vines, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps,
acted on Friday to affirm the death sentence against Akbar, which was
handed down on April 28, 2005, after the unanimous vote of a military
court, the army said.
"The case now goes to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals under an
automatic appeal," it said.
Akbar rolled grenades into three tents at Camp Pennsylvania in the
northern Kuwait desert on March 22, 2003 as soldiers slept.
The attack, on the night before the unit was to have crossed into Iraq,
killed Captain Christopher Seifert, 27, and Air Force Major Gregory
Stone, 40, and wounded 14 other soldiers.
Defence attorneys argued that Akbar, a Muslim convert, was mentally ill
at the time of the attack.
The last military execution took place in 1961, but seven other service
members have been sentenced to death since the military death penalty
was reinstated in 1984.