AVIANO AIR BASE, Italy — A senior airman assigned to the 31st Munitions Squadron at Camp Darby was sentenced to 45 days in prison, fined $500 and stripped of one rank Friday in a special court-martial involving the theft of government computers.

Gregory A. Green, who was a part of the 712th RED HORSE Detachment at the time the incidents took place in the fall of 2006, pleaded guilty to larceny and unlawfully selling government property. He was charged with taking 13 computers and two monitors that belonged to his unit — which was disbanding — instead of turning them over to proper authorities for redistribution or disposal.

In a stipulation of fact that was part of a pretrial agreement he signed, Green said he filled out paperwork indicating that 12 of the computers would be turned over for disposal. He kept the computers instead, giving five of them to a soldier also stationed at Camp Darby. The military judge, Col. Gordon Hammock, said during the trial that the soldier received Article 15 punishment and is no longer in the service.

Green said he later decided to keep the computer he used at work and two monitors and didn’t try to document their loss. He later returned one of the computers to his office, sold another and gave two away. The government has since recovered all the computers and monitors, and they were on display in the courtroom.

The computers and monitors, which were all at least a few years old, were valued at about $4,600 using Air Force calculations and $13,600 using an Army formula, according to testimony. The two services reportedly have differing methods of accounting for depreciation due to age.

Green repeatedly told Hammock that he knew he was doing something wrong. But he said he had witnessed the destruction of computer equipment months before and he believed that to be a waste.