Navy SEAL acquitted of assaulting Iraqi detainee

Norfolk, Virginia (News Today) - Navy SEAL Matthew McCabe, who was accused of punching an Iraqi detainee, was found not guilty on all charges by a military jury Thursday.

McCabe, a 24-year-old petty officer 2nd class, had been charged with assaulting Iraqi detainee Ahmed Hashim Abed, who was arrested in September in Iraq for allegedly orchestrating the 2004 murders of four U.S. contractors in Falluja. The contractors' burned bodies were later hung from a bridge.

Besides assault, McCabe had been charged with dereliction of duty for failing to protect a prisoner and with lying to investigators.

"It's over and done with," McCabe said at a press conference after the four day court-martial. "We're moving on with our careers."

Two other Navy SEALs -- Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe and Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas -- were charged with dereliction of duty for allegedly abusing the same detainee, but were acquitted in April in military court in Iraq.

Maj. Gen. Charles Cleveland, the convening authority in all three cases, on Thursday defended his decision to let the courts-martial go forward.

"Despite the opinions of some who preferred that these charges not proceed, I allowed these charges to go forward because I truly believe that the best process known for uncovering the truth, when the facts are contested, is that process which is found in our adversarial justice system," Cleveland said in a statement after McCabe's acquittal.

"There is no better way to discover the truth than by presenting the evidence to an unbiased panel of members, having witnesses testify under oath, and having rigorous cross examination," he said.

One of two defense witnesses, Huertas said Thursday he was with McCabe during the alleged incident and did not see McCabe strike the detainee.

The second defense witness, Dr. Curtis Schmidt, said blood found on Abed's clothing could have been caused by Abed biting a canker sore. During cross-examination, Schmidt, who phoned in his testimony from Iraq, also said the bleeding could have been caused if Abed fell.

On Wednesday, the government's key witness, Petty Officer Kevin Demartino, testified that he saw McCabe hit Abed in the abdomen.

Demartino, who is not a SEAL, testified that he did not initially report the September assault to his superiors because "this is these guys' lives. Some guys can see something and start singing like a bird. I couldn't do it," he said.

"I should've done it. By the book, it's a failure to report," he added.

Demartino testified that his conscience eventually got the better of him, so he finally reported his version of the events surrounding the detainee's beating.

"It was either being in the good graces of the SEALs or being in the good graces of God," Demartino said.

McCabe's defense attorneys called a series of witnesses who questioned Demartino's version of events and said he was distraught due to his deployment. Some directly contradicted Demartino, saying that statements he attributed to them during his testimony were false.

"He had issues," McCabe said of Demartino after his verdict was announced. "Everybody made that clear."

Source : CNN

Read More

Women to begin serving on Navy subs in 2011, officials say

(News Terupdate) - The first women to serve on U.S. Navy submarines are expected to be on the job by fall of 2011, Navy officials said Thursday, ushering in a policy change to what has been an elite service open only to men since the start of the modern Navy's submarine program.

While Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the change last month, the Navy had to wait for Congress to review and approve the policy change over a 30-day period which ended at midnight Thursday morning.

The official announcement came later Thursday from the commander of Submarine Group 10, Rear Adm. Barry Bruner, during a news conference at the Navy submarine base at Kings Bay, Georgia.

The first women chosen for the program will be selected by the Navy among upcoming graduates from the Naval Academy, the collegiate Reserves Officer Training Corps -- also known as ROTC -- and officer candidate schools.

Those women will go through the intensive 15-month submarine officer training program, which includes nuclear power school, submarine training, and the Submarine Officer Basic Course.

The Navy will implement the policy change by assigning three female officers to eight different crews of guided-missile attack and ballistic-missile submarines. The assignments involve two submarines on the East Coast and two on the West Coast, according to Navy officials.

Smaller, fast-attack submarines are considered to be too small to accommodate the necessary infrastructure change in living quarters that is possible on the larger subs, Navy officials explained.

Integrating female officers into the submarine squadrons is the first phase of the policy change. Including female enlisted sailors into the crews will take place in a second phase in the coming years, the officials said.

Women joined the crews of the Navy's surface ships in 1994, but officials had previously cited limited privacy and the cost of reconfiguring the vessels in arguing against their joining sub crews.

The change in policy was recommended by the top naval officer, Adm. Gary Roughead; the secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus; and Gates. No Navy leaders opposed the plan, officials said.

"The young women that have come up to me since we announced our intention to change the policy have such great enthusiasm," Roughead said in a statement Thursday.

"There are extremely capable women in the Navy who have the talent and desire to succeed in the submarine force," Mabus added in the same statement.

Women make up 15 percent of the active duty Navy: 52,446 of 330,700 sailors in the service, according to Navy statistics.

Female sailors still cannot serve in the elite SEAL program, because those are considered frontline combat unit positions. Similar regulations in the other branches of the military also prevent women from serving in combat positions.

Source : CNN

Read More

2nd Navy SEAL found not guilty in Iraq

Baghdad, Iraq (News Terupdate) - A military judge Friday found Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, one of three Navy SEALs accused in the alleged beating an Iraqi detainee, not guilty, a military spokesman said. Keefe was accused of dereliction of duty for not preventing abuse of a prisoner.

The verdict comes a day after another of the other accused sailors, U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas, was found not guilty of dereliction of duty. Huertas was also charged with impeding an investigation by attempting to influence the testimony of another sailor.

In graphic testimony delivered in Huertas' court-martial earlier this week, the prisoner, Ahmed Hashim Abed, accused Keefe, Huertas and another Navy SEAL -- Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew McCabe -- of beating him.

Keefe had declined a jury and was found not guilty by a military judge, according to the military spokesman, Terry Conder, Public Affairs Officer for Joint Forces Special Operations Component Command.

Huertas was found not guilty Thursday by a military jury.

Abed is thought by U.S. authorities to be the mastermind in the slayings and mutilation of four U.S. contractors in Falluja, Iraq, in 2004, one of the war's most notorious crimes against Americans.

Last January, a military judge ruled that the trials of Keefe and Huertas be held on a base in Iraq.

McCabe, who is charged with assault, will be tried May 3 in Norfolk, Virginia.

Source : CNN

Read More