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Prosecution of "fragging" case in Iraq
allen griggs
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NYTimes.com
After a Feud and 2 Deaths, Soldiers' Families Torn
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Published: June 16, 2008
Capt. Phillip Esposito and Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez went to war together, two very different soldiers from the same New York National Guard unit. After five months in Iraq, a bombing sent both men back home, one in a coffin, the other in handcuffs, a suspect in his murder.
Soldier-on-Soldier Attacks
To understand the history and psychology of fragging, an attack on one soldier by another, Paul von Zielbauer of The Times asked Paul J. Springer, a history professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, to address some questions on a topic he has long studied, including the Army's response to such attacks and whether certain types of soldier-on-soldier attacks should qualify for the label.
"It is all too common to find the U.S. Army and Marines willing to bend recruitment rules to fill quotas."
Captain Esposito, as straightforward as his M4 carbine, was an Eagle Scout and West Point graduate who built a civilian career as a computer specialist for a Wall Street investment bank. His service as a National Guard company commander, family members said, was a matter of honor and old-fashioned patriotism.
Sergeant Martinez came from a tougher background, documents and interviews show, and found camaraderie and discipline in military service. Transplanted from Puerto Rico as a teenager, he drifted through a series of part-time jobs after high school, taking community college classes in electronics. But he had a habit of playing by his own rules, some of his managers said, and lacked maturity. Rejected by the Army Reserve and Navy Reserve, he was fired by U.P.S. in 1999.
The National Guard eventually admitted him on a waiver after three failed attempts to pass the military's standardized aptitude test. Working at the Watervliet Arsenal, near Albany, Sergeant Martinez strained to handle duties that called for more than basic clerical or mechanical work.
In January 2005, with the Iraq insurgency in violent bloom, the dutiful company commander and the struggling sergeant deployed with the 42nd Infantry Division to Kuwait and then to northern Iraq. At a forward operating base in Tikrit, under battlefield conditions in a hostile Sunni Arab region, a mutual distrust between Sergeant Martinez and Captain Esposito devolved into acrimony and, according to Army prosecutors, premeditated murder.
"I want him to die," one soldier later testified he heard Sergeant Martinez say soon after their arrival in Iraq.
On June 7 of that year, Sergeant Martinez detonated a Claymore mine he had placed in the window of Captain Esposito's quarters, Army prosecutors said, killing him and severely wounding a first lieutenant, Lou Allen, who died later in surgery. They said three hand grenades were also used in the attack.
In the coming months, Sergeant Martinez is expected to face court-martial in the deaths. He has consistently maintained his innocence. If convicted, he would be eligible for the death penalty.
Attacks on soldiers by another soldier usually of a lower rank, known in military slang as "fragging" because a fragmentation grenade was often the weapon of choice, were an alarming problem during the Vietnam War but have been extremely rare in Iraq. The 2005 attack is only the second such case the Army has prosecuted since the beginning of the Iraq war. By comparison, in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970, the Army logged more than 300 attacks that killed 75 commissioned and noncommissioned officers, said Paul J. Springer, a history professor at West Point.
Experts attributed the dropoff to the professionalism and higher morale that came with the all-volunteer military instituted in 1973. "With fragging, you're likely to find someone who never really fit into the military system, who probably felt like an outsider," said Dr. David Walker, a psychiatrist who served in the Air Force.
Prosecutors have argued that in this case, the evidence points squarely at Sergeant Martinez.
They said that he was the only soldier with access to grenades and Claymore mines who had repeatedly threatened the captain; that after the attack, investigators discovered a grenade crate in the sergeant's supply room bearing the same serial number as the one stamped on grenade parts found near the scene; that shortly before the attack, 10 grenades from Sergeant Martinez's supply area disappeared; and that immediately after the attack, he was seen wearing a Kevlar vest and standing in the road a few yards from where the mine's firing apparatus was found.
Army defense lawyers have argued that the evidence is circumstantial and does not come close to showing that their client, who remains in military custody in North Carolina, committed any crime. Many soldiers had access to grenades, they said, and serial numbers on grenade crates did not always match those on the grenades inside.
Moreover, they argued, Sergeant Martinez's statements about the captain "were of a venting nature," and neither of the officers who testified that they heard them thought they were serious enough to report.
"Their argument is far more persuasive than any of the evidence that was presented," one of the sergeant's military lawyers, Maj. E. John Gregory, said of prosecutors' case in a Nov. 1, 2005, hearing. "They rely on inference and circumstance."
The deaths of Captain Esposito, 30, and Lieutenant Allen, 34, have led to a painful reckoning among their families.
Their widows, now raising five children between them, question why Sergeant Martinez, now 40, an underachiever rejected by other military branches, was accepted, promoted and sent to war by the National Guard. Within the 42nd Division, a proud unit with a distinguished history, questions linger over whether an embittered soldier's threats to kill his commander should have been taken seriously.
"I'm convinced this was 100 percent preventable," said Captain Esposito's wife, Siobhan Esposito. "This guy was a problem, and they knew he was a problem."
Barbara Allen, Lieutenant Allen's wife, said, "We're never going to be free of this until the death penalty is carried out."
Sergeant Martinez's lawyers declined to comment for this article. A spokesman for the National Guard said he could not discuss an active case.
After a Feud and 2 Deaths, Soldiers' Families Torn
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER
Published: June 16, 2008
Capt. Phillip Esposito and Staff Sgt. Alberto Martinez went to war together, two very different soldiers from the same New York National Guard unit. After five months in Iraq, a bombing sent both men back home, one in a coffin, the other in handcuffs, a suspect in his murder.
Soldier-on-Soldier Attacks
To understand the history and psychology of fragging, an attack on one soldier by another, Paul von Zielbauer of The Times asked Paul J. Springer, a history professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point, to address some questions on a topic he has long studied, including the Army's response to such attacks and whether certain types of soldier-on-soldier attacks should qualify for the label.
"It is all too common to find the U.S. Army and Marines willing to bend recruitment rules to fill quotas."
Captain Esposito, as straightforward as his M4 carbine, was an Eagle Scout and West Point graduate who built a civilian career as a computer specialist for a Wall Street investment bank. His service as a National Guard company commander, family members said, was a matter of honor and old-fashioned patriotism.
Sergeant Martinez came from a tougher background, documents and interviews show, and found camaraderie and discipline in military service. Transplanted from Puerto Rico as a teenager, he drifted through a series of part-time jobs after high school, taking community college classes in electronics. But he had a habit of playing by his own rules, some of his managers said, and lacked maturity. Rejected by the Army Reserve and Navy Reserve, he was fired by U.P.S. in 1999.
The National Guard eventually admitted him on a waiver after three failed attempts to pass the military's standardized aptitude test. Working at the Watervliet Arsenal, near Albany, Sergeant Martinez strained to handle duties that called for more than basic clerical or mechanical work.
In January 2005, with the Iraq insurgency in violent bloom, the dutiful company commander and the struggling sergeant deployed with the 42nd Infantry Division to Kuwait and then to northern Iraq. At a forward operating base in Tikrit, under battlefield conditions in a hostile Sunni Arab region, a mutual distrust between Sergeant Martinez and Captain Esposito devolved into acrimony and, according to Army prosecutors, premeditated murder.
"I want him to die," one soldier later testified he heard Sergeant Martinez say soon after their arrival in Iraq.
On June 7 of that year, Sergeant Martinez detonated a Claymore mine he had placed in the window of Captain Esposito's quarters, Army prosecutors said, killing him and severely wounding a first lieutenant, Lou Allen, who died later in surgery. They said three hand grenades were also used in the attack.
In the coming months, Sergeant Martinez is expected to face court-martial in the deaths. He has consistently maintained his innocence. If convicted, he would be eligible for the death penalty.
Attacks on soldiers by another soldier usually of a lower rank, known in military slang as "fragging" because a fragmentation grenade was often the weapon of choice, were an alarming problem during the Vietnam War but have been extremely rare in Iraq. The 2005 attack is only the second such case the Army has prosecuted since the beginning of the Iraq war. By comparison, in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970, the Army logged more than 300 attacks that killed 75 commissioned and noncommissioned officers, said Paul J. Springer, a history professor at West Point.
Experts attributed the dropoff to the professionalism and higher morale that came with the all-volunteer military instituted in 1973. "With fragging, you're likely to find someone who never really fit into the military system, who probably felt like an outsider," said Dr. David Walker, a psychiatrist who served in the Air Force.
Prosecutors have argued that in this case, the evidence points squarely at Sergeant Martinez.
They said that he was the only soldier with access to grenades and Claymore mines who had repeatedly threatened the captain; that after the attack, investigators discovered a grenade crate in the sergeant's supply room bearing the same serial number as the one stamped on grenade parts found near the scene; that shortly before the attack, 10 grenades from Sergeant Martinez's supply area disappeared; and that immediately after the attack, he was seen wearing a Kevlar vest and standing in the road a few yards from where the mine's firing apparatus was found.
Army defense lawyers have argued that the evidence is circumstantial and does not come close to showing that their client, who remains in military custody in North Carolina, committed any crime. Many soldiers had access to grenades, they said, and serial numbers on grenade crates did not always match those on the grenades inside.
Moreover, they argued, Sergeant Martinez's statements about the captain "were of a venting nature," and neither of the officers who testified that they heard them thought they were serious enough to report.
"Their argument is far more persuasive than any of the evidence that was presented," one of the sergeant's military lawyers, Maj. E. John Gregory, said of prosecutors' case in a Nov. 1, 2005, hearing. "They rely on inference and circumstance."
The deaths of Captain Esposito, 30, and Lieutenant Allen, 34, have led to a painful reckoning among their families.
Their widows, now raising five children between them, question why Sergeant Martinez, now 40, an underachiever rejected by other military branches, was accepted, promoted and sent to war by the National Guard. Within the 42nd Division, a proud unit with a distinguished history, questions linger over whether an embittered soldier's threats to kill his commander should have been taken seriously.
"I'm convinced this was 100 percent preventable," said Captain Esposito's wife, Siobhan Esposito. "This guy was a problem, and they knew he was a problem."
Barbara Allen, Lieutenant Allen's wife, said, "We're never going to be free of this until the death penalty is carried out."
Sergeant Martinez's lawyers declined to comment for this article. A spokesman for the National Guard said he could not discuss an active case.
Comments
Working at the Watervliet Arsenal, near Albany, Sergeant Martinez strained to handle duties that called for more than basic clerical or mechanical work.
This guy was a Staff Sgt?
Wow......
quote:Originally posted by allen griggs
Working at the Watervliet Arsenal, near Albany, Sergeant Martinez strained to handle duties that called for more than basic clerical or mechanical work.
This guy was a Staff Sgt?
Wow......
some slip through the cracks and get promoted despite their best efforts otherwise.