Court-martial to open in killings of 3 Iraqis

By Paul von Zielbauer
New York Times Staff Writer

November 6, 2007

BAGHDAD — An Army sniper team leader charged with murdering three men south of Baghdad will go on trial today in Baghdad in a court-martial that is likely to highlight a classified Pentagon program in which snipers placed fake weapons as “bait” to attract and kill enemy fighters.

The team leader, Staff Sgt. Michael A. Hensley, who was praised by his battalion’s leaders earlier this year for dramatically increasing his unit’s kill count, is charged with the premeditated murder of three men in separate killings last April and May near Iskandariya, a Sunni Arab region south of Baghdad where American forces have battled a tenacious insurgency.

Sergeant Hensley, 27, of Candler, N.C., is one of three members of the First Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, Fourth Brigade (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, who were charged in the three killings. Sergeant Hensley, an Army Ranger and expert marksman, was the only one of the three snipers charged with all three.

The baiting program was introduced to select members of the First Battalion, including Sergeant Hensley, in late January by the Asymmetrical Warfare Group, a Defense Department agency that develops secret methods of fighting insurgents in Iraq, said Capt. Matthew Didier, the platoon commander at the time of the killings, in a sworn statement that has not been made public but was obtained by The New York Times.

“If we happened to see the individual take the items we would engage, to destroy the enemy,” Captain Didier said in the statement, dated June 23.

Lawyers for Sergeant Hensley and the other snipers accused in the case have suggested the baiting program is relevant to their defense because it demonstrates the extent to which Army and Pentagon commanders approved unconventional methods of killing not only insurgents but also unarmed men of military age who were believed to be enemy fighters.

Last month, a military jury found one of the other team members, Specialist Jorge G. Sandoval, not guilty of killing two men, on April 27 and May 11, but convicted him of planting evidence — a roll of copper trigger wire — on one of the bodies. An evidentiary hearing for the third member of the sniper team, Sgt. Evan Vela, who is accused of shooting a man in the head with a pistol on May 11 after Sergeant Hensley captured him, is to begin later this month.

All three snipers’ legal cases have raised questions about how military commanders in Iraq have changed or expanded the rules for targeting and killing enemy forces in Iraq during a determined insurgency.

In the Sandoval trial, for instance, a sniper team member, Sgt. David Murphy, testified that Captain Didier told his men before the April 27 killing that their rules of engagement had changed to allow them to kill even unarmed men fleeing a battle in a rural area with American or Iraqi Army forces.

“Engage fleeing local nationals without weapons,” Sergeant Murphy testified hearing Captain Didier say in a radio transmission following a firefight with insurgents that day, using a military term for Iraqis. Referring to the order, Sergeant. Murphy added, “That was the first time we’d heard that.”

Sergeant Hensley is accused of killing a man on April 14 after reporting that he saw the man laying wire for a bomb, court documents said. He was also charged with murder in the second killing, on April 27, in which he ordered Specialist Sandoval to kill a man they believed was fleeing a battle with American forces, after Captain Didier cleared them to shoot.

In the third killing, on May 11, prosecutors say Sergeant Hensley ordered Sergeant Vela to kill an Iraqi man captured near the snipers’ hide-out. But in a sworn statement given later that day and obtained by The New York Times, Sergeant Hensley said he ordered Sergeant Vela to shoot the man after the man, surprised by his capture, struggled to aim a loaded AK-47 at other sniper team members.

“I reached up and put him into a rear naked choke, his hands still on the weapon, struggling to fire it,” Sergeant Hensley wrote in the statement. “I took him to the ground, utilizing his head garment as it slid down over his head. Sergeant Vela then placed 2 9-millimeter rounds in the insurgent’s head.”

Sergeant Hensley’s lawyers are expected to portray all three killings as occurring with the knowledge and encouragement of his superiors.

In interviews, several snipers in Sergeant Hensley’s unit, which has been disbanded, said the First Battalion’s top commissioned and noncommissioned officers had encouraged soldiers to go beyond the normal rules of engagement to increase kill counts.

“They told us over and over again, ‘Hey, if you guys feel threatened, kill them,’” said Specialist Joshua Michaud in an interview at Camp Liberty, Iraq, last month. In the sniper unit, he said, those comments were taken to mean, “Go out there and kill more people.”