"He was a son, a brother, someone very important to them," he said. "I took someone they loved and cared for."
The News Observer reports that a National Guardsman pleaded guilty to killing a 17-year-old Iraqi boy. Pte. Federico Daniel Merida, 21, said he shot the young man 11 times after they had sex in a guard tower. (From court-martial records)
Merida was sentenced Sept. 25 to 25 years in prison and reduced in rank and will be dishonorably discharged. He is being held at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., a Leavenworth spokeswoman told the News Observer.
Details of this case had been withheld by the U.S. army officials at Forward Operating Base Danger, the location of the court martial in Iraq.
Merida first told investigators that the teen demanded money at gunpoint. Later, he said he killed him because the boy forced him to have sex.
Finally in a third interview, Merida said he got angry after the two had consensual sex. Merida in an agreement with the Army, pleaded gulity to murder without premeditation. He will serve 25 years. He was also found not guilty for having consensual sex while he should have been guarding the camp.
The young Pte. Merida apologized to the victim's family,
"He was a son, a brother, someone very important to them," he said. "I took someone they loved and cared for."
For those of you that need to know this stuff, Merida is a member of the 113th Field Artillery Battalion's Battery B, based in Monroe. He deployed to Iraq early this year with an N.C. National Guard brigade of several thousand soldiers, which was placed under command of the 1st Infantry Division.
With files from the News Observer.com
7 comments:
Homophobia claims two more lives.
This ought to make Bush happy. One more queer dead and he was lucky enough to have a soldier killed too. Isn't that his whole idea. I figure that is how he is working out the social security problem. Kill as many young people as he can then they won't be able to collect. I'll bet that if he had his way gays wouldn't be permitted to collect social security either.
Well I guess Pte. Federico Daniel Merida (the US soldier who had consesual sex with a 17 year old Iraqi boy and then killed him) will get all the "loving" he needs in prison for the next 25 years. Serves the little bastard right. Pack the lube, man, you are sooooooo gonna need it where you're going.
It looks to me like "don't ask, don't tell" may have
some side effects. He was just supposed to kill the enemy, but it looks like he had sex with him first, and then killed him. Not a proud moment in gay history...
I would blame this not on gays but on homophobia. The guy was disgusted by what he had done. He was feeling guilty. Society is largely responsible for this event. Not to take away from the act of killing someone, it has to be noted that extenuating circumstances occurred here.
God Bless people promoting hate and intolerance, especially BUSH and Cheney
Hmmmm........I wonder (or do I?) why this story never made it onto the CNNs Headline News? If it did I missed it.
Extenuating circumstances? I suspect that the lawyer representing Matthew Shepard's killers said the same thing and I don't think it will wash here either. Homophobia? Not really. I think he was afraid of being outed and tossed out of the military, a result of "don't ask, don't tell", and committed murder to protect his secret. It wasn't shame, it was a cover-up.
I don't think gays are to blame; the blame for this falls on the DA,DT policy and the individual who could neither control nor own up to his actions. Still, he has harmed gays in general by his actions.
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