A Florida soldier convicted Friday of deserting his U.S. Army unit in Iraq is the son of Nicaragua’s most prominent leftist singer, who wrote the line "Let’s fight the Yankee, enemy of humanity" into Nicaragua’s former Sandinista anthem. The father, Carlos Mejia Godoy, condemned Friday’s verdict, saying his son, Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, was convicted and sentenced to a year in jail and a bad conduct discharge in retaliation for having mentioned abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers. "We expected this verdict," Mejia Godoy said, noting "my son’s situation worsened after he bravely revealed the torture he had witnessed against Iraqis." Mejia Godoy has said in recent interviews that he opposed his son joining the U.S. army, but didn’t try to stop him.
Mejia Godoy wrote scores of leftist-oriented songs, including the anthem for the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which ruled Nicaragua from 1979 to 1989. The line about "Yankee, enemy of humanity" had always proved controversial, and the Sandinista Party later dropped it from the anthem. Mejia Godoy said his son "was prepared for this and whatever came, because he took up this challenge with all the firmness and dignity of his Nicaraguan heart."
The younger Mejia, of Miami Beach, Fla., in fact listed his citizenship as Costa Rican, and based part of his defense against the desertion charge on an obscure, old Costa Rica-U.S. treaty which exempts citizens of that country from forced service in U.S. militias. Camilo Mejia said he joined the Florida National Guard to help pay for college. He was born in Nicaragua, but his mother, at that point separated from Mejia Godoy, took Camilo Mejia to live in Costa Rica at the age of one. Mejia, 28, turned himself in in March and sought status as a conscientious objector. |