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| Fifth Column |
| Marine Charged In US Civilian Court With Fallujah Actions |
| 2008-04-22 |
| Riverside, California – The defense team representing Marine infantryman Jose Luis Nazario asked a federal court judge Monday to dismiss voluntary manslaughter charges against their client for allegedly killing two Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq more than three years ago. At the time Nazario was a squad leader engaged in desperate house-to-house combat. The decorated Marine veteran was assigned to 3rd Platoon, Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines when the incident allegedly occurred. A year later four enlisted members of the same platoon would be charged with murder and other war crimes in the unrelated "Haditha Massacre" incident... ...There are no bodies, no names, no grieving relatives, no civilian witnesses, no crime scene, and no physical evidence... ... Nazario, now a civilian without any military obligation, was charged under the Military Extraterritorial Extradition Act (MEJA), a law passed by Congress in 2000 to give government prosecutors a mechanism for charging civilians and former service members for alleged criminal acts they committed while serving overseas. Before MEJA, members of the armed forces were prosecuted under military law or not at all, and in many instances civilians who committed crimes in foreign lands were completely beyond the reach of American civilian jurisdiction. MEJA applies to two categories of people, those “employed by or accompanying” the armed forces outside the U.S. and those to whom the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) – military law – applied at the time of the offense. Nazario is in that category of alleged offenders. Assistant US Attorneys Jerry A. Behnke and Charles J. Kovats represented the government in Nazario’s motion hearing. They argued that MEJA is specifically tailored to prosecute former service members who allegedly committed crimes while serving in combat... |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #6 And furthermore: I'd rather have the military legal system separate from the civilian legal system. Those who haven't been there cannot be counted on to understand military circumstances. |
| Posted by: gorb 2008-04-22 23:47 |
| #5 Also, was he one of the ones charged earlier? If so, this sure sounds like double jeopardy Apparently the military's legal system doesn't count. |
| Posted by: gorb 2008-04-22 23:46 |
| #4 The Rodney King/LA Police case was double jeopardy as the founding fathers wrote, but not what the 'Living' Constitutionalist would have you believe. IIRC Congress had already passed a law authorizing anyone out of the service to be recalled for any crime committed while in service. If true, then this is an attempt to not have a 'jury of one's peers' sit in judgment. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-04-22 21:31 |
| #3 Also, was he one of the ones charged earlier? If so, this sure sounds like double jeopardy. But them, I am not |
| Posted by: Rambler in California 2008-04-22 21:11 |
| #2 ..There are no bodies, no names, no grieving relatives, no civilian witnesses, no crime scene, and no physical evidence... Other than that, they've got him cold. |
| Posted by: Rambler in California 2008-04-22 19:55 |
| #1 Thanks congress. Really. Next time just deploy both houses of congress to a hot zone. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2008-04-22 18:39 |