Convicted Reservist Escapes Jail Time

[Judi Lynn]

Convicted Reservist Escapes Jail Time

Thursday August 18, 2005 10:01 PM

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL
Associated Press Writer

FORT BLISS, Texas (AP) - A military jury spared an Army reservist jail time but reduced his rank Thursday for assaulting a prisoner who later died at a detention center in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors had asked that Pfc. Willie V. Brand, 27, be sent to a military prison for 10 years with a dishonorable discharge. Instead, the panel reduced his rank to private.

Brand sighed in relief and hugged his lawyer. A commander reviews military jury decisions but cannot impose a more serious penalty.

Brand was convicted Wednesday of assault, maltreatment, maiming and making a false official statement in connection with an attack on a detainee known as Dilawar in December 2002.
(snip/...)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-5219193,00.html

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Dilawar, tortured to death on December 10 2002, was a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver and farmer who weighed 122 pounds and was described by his interpreters as neither violent nor aggressive.

When beaten, he repeatedly cried "Allah!" The outcry appears to have amused U.S. military personnel, as the act of striking him in order to provoke a scream of "Allah!" eventually "became a kind of running joke," according to one of the MP's. "People kept showing up to give this detainee a common peroneal strike just to hear him scream out 'Allah,' " he said. "It went on over a 24-hour period, and I would think that it was over 100 strikes."

The Times reported that:

On the day of his death, Dilawar had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
"A guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.
"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying. Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen.
It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagram_torture_and_prisoner_abuse

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