WüRZBURG, Germany — The three men sat in the courtyard of their house in the village of Albu Shakur, Iraq, their hands fastened behind their backs.
An informant had told Sgt. 1st Class Jorge Diaz, a platoon sergeant for Company C of the 1st Infantry Division’s 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, that one of these men was the leader of the local insurgency.
Diaz became frustrated because he could get no information from the oldest of the three. So he told Sgt. Fernando Alvarez, the squad leader at his side, to stand up the second one, Thaher Khaleefa Ahmed, and get out of the way. Diaz fingered his M4 semi-automatic rifle as Alvarez complied.
“As I brought the weapon up, my finger automatically went from ‘safe’ to ‘semi,’” Diaz tearfully told a judge in his court-martial Wednesday. “Then I squeezed the trigger.”
Based on his statement, Lt. Col. Robin Hall convicted Diaz of unpremeditated murder, rejecting the claim of his defense attorneys that the shooting on Oct. 25, 2004, was a terrible accident.
Hall also convicted him of trying to impede the investigation when Diaz suggested to Alvarez that he tell police the prisoner had loosened his cuffs and charged at Diaz. And he was found guilty of a separate charge of mistreating a teenage prisoner in Albu Shakur the day before.
Hall, however, acquitted him of making a false statement to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division.
Diaz’s unit had been part of Task Force 1-77 and had worked out of several bases near Balad, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, for the previous seven months. Albu Shakur had been the source of numerous mortar attacks on two nearby U.S. bases, Logistics Support Area Anaconda and Forward Operating Base Paliwoda.
Several soldiers testified Diaz had always been an outstanding leader, treating prisoners humanely and with respect. But they said he had returned from his mid-tour leave a few weeks earlier with a new, harder attitude that one of them, Pfc. Billy Fielder, called “Operation Diaz.”
It had been evident Oct. 24, when Diaz had cuffed a teenage prisoner who an informant said was guarding an insurgent weapons cache. He held a 9 mm pistol to the youth’s head, forced him to hold a smoke grenade with the pin out and held him by the throat — crimes that Diaz acknowledged. The boy later was released.
Then came the shooting at Ahmed’s house the next day. Diaz said he felt threatened by the man, but no witnesses saw him make a move toward Diaz. Several testified Ahmed’s hands had been cuffed behind his back before the shooting, but they were cuffed in front of him afterward.
Diaz’s attorney, Philip Cave, presented no witnesses. But in his closing argument, he described the shooting as an accident, a split-second overreaction by a good but stressed-out soldier in a highly charged, dangerous war zone. He also said Alvarez lied about the alleged cover-up to save himself from punishment.
“There’s nothing to indicate this was going to be an intentional killing,” Cave said. “The only person who saw, really, what was going on was Sgt. Diaz.”
The military prosecutor, Capt. Brian Sardelli, said Diaz’s orders to stand Ahmed up, then move out of the way, showed he planned to kill the prisoner.
“Good soldiers don’t shoot zip-strapped detainees when they’re just standing there, and kill them,” Sardelli said. “He’s judge, jury and executioner, and he took the guy out.”
In the judge-alone trial, Hall deliberated for nearly an hour before delivering the verdict. The court then heard testimony from both sides in the sentencing phase of the trial, but the punishment had not yet been determined as Stars and Stripes went to press.
