GI Pleads Guilty in Kosovo Slaying

A U.S. soldier scheduled to stand trial this week for the killing of an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl in Kosovo has changed his strategy and pleaded guilty, a military spokeswoman said Saturday.

Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, 36, entered the plea late Friday at the request of his defense lawyer and will be sentenced Monday, the day his trial was to start, said Hilde Patton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army’s 5th Corps.

He pleaded guilty to charges of murder, forcible sodomy and three counts of indecent acts with a child, she said.

But prosecutors, without explanation, dropped charges of sodomy, murder and rape during the two-hour session led by a U.S. Army judge, Col. Kenneth Clavenger.

Ronghi faces a possible sentence of life in prison, or life without the possibility of parole, Patton said.

Ronghi was charged with killing Merita Shabiu on Jan. 13 in the basement of an apartment building and burying her body in the snow near the town of Vitina.

A native of Niles, Ohio, Ronghi was a weapons squad leader assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Ft. Bragg, N.C., and was serving with U.S. peacekeeping forces at the time of the killing.

The girl’s death raised tensions in Kosovo--a province of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia--between ethnic Albanians and peacekeepers.