JAG CENTRAL

Former Army SGT Lisa Girman, Cleared of Iraqi Abuse Charges (BrandonBlog)

From USA Today, Two Former Soldiers Cleared of Iraq Misconduct:

Two army reservists discharged last year over allegations they mistreated Iraqi prisoners have been cleared by an Army review board and can rejoin the military, their attorney said Friday.
The Army Discharge Review Board this week reversed the former soldiers' discharges and findings of misconduct, said Gary Myers, an attorney who represented Scott McKenzie, Lisa Girman and a third former soldier who was cleared in the same manner in January.

The Army declined comment. "It's been our long-standing practice that we do not comment on nonjudicial and administrative type actions," said Lt. Col. Pamela Hart, an Army spokeswoman.

"When I got the call, first thing I did was, I thanked God," said McKenzie, 40, a deacon at the Clearfield Presbyterian Church and a state prison guard. "I figured that if God leads you to it, God will lead you through it."

Girman, 37, a state trooper who lives near Wilkes-Barre, said, "It's not really about winning, it's about setting things right."

McKenzie and Girman were among four Army reservists with the Pennsylvania-based 320th Military Police Battalion who were charged with punching and kicking several Iraqis, breaking one man's nose, while escorting a busload of prisoners to a POW processing center near Umm Qasr in May 2003.

All four had maintained their innocence and said they used only necessary force to subdue unruly prisoners.

UPDATE: Professor Kenneth Anderson in his Law of War Blog points to an op-ed column I missed in Aug. 20th's Washington Post from the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, Matthew Waxman, stating how novel the United States is in releasing enemy combatants while an active war is being fought:

Terrorists must be captured and prevented from returning to the global battlefield. But it need not -- nor in many cases should it -- be the United States that detains them for the long term. All nations that have joined forces in the global war on terrorism share responsibility for keeping captured terrorists from returning to violence.

American armed forces will continue to capture and detain terrorist fighters like the approximately 510 enemy combatants currently at Guantanamo. The principle that a state is legally entitled to detain enemy fighters until the enemy -- in this case, al Qaeda and its affiliates, including the Taliban -- is defeated is not a new one; it is deeply rooted in international law. The Geneva Convention, for example, reflects the well-established notion that captured enemy fighters can be kept off the battlefield until the war is over.

Categories: Detainee-Abuse, Iraq, Newspapers