Accused Army Deserter Cites Abuse

A U.S. soldier charged with deserting his unit in Iraq walked away from the war partly to avoid orders to abuse Iraqi prisoners, his attorneys argued Wednesday.

Attorneys for Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, an infantryman with the Florida National Guard, spent the first day of his court-martial asking a military judge to allow witnesses to testify in support of Mejia’s claim that his unit was ordered to abuse Iraqi detainees.

The judge, Col. Gary Smith, ruled that evidence on the “legality and morality” of prisoner treatment in Iraq was irrelevant to the desertion charge.

Ramsey Clark, one of Mejia’s lawyers, said Mejia’s unit was ordered to use sleep-deprivation tactics with blindfolded Iraqi detainees, at least once by cocking a pistol next to their heads.

Clark, U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson and an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, said Mejia was protected by international law in avoiding duties that would have constituted war crimes. He compared Mejia’s claims of prisoner mistreatment to the abuse scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

“The United States is seeking to court-martial soldiers [in Iraq] for outrageous abuses at the same time it prosecutes a soldier halfway around the world because he did what he had a duty to do under international law,” Clark said.

The judge ruled that only Mejia himself could raise the abuse issue before a military jury of officers and enlisted men that will begin hearing the case today.

Mejia, 28, is charged with desertion after failing to return to his unit in Iraq after a two-week furlough in October. He turned himself in to the Army in March after being gone five months, saying he did not want to fight in an “oil-driven war.”