Killing Drives Wedge Between Troops

Like most men from his impoverished Bedouin village, 17-year-old Falah Zaggam joined the Iraqi national guard for a job and steady paycheck.

Federico Merida, 21, was raising a family and working at a furniture business in North Carolina when his U.S. National Guard unit was sent to Iraq earlier this year.

Late one night last spring, the two guardsmen found themselves alone in a lookout tower at a military base here in Ad Dawr, near Tikrit in northern Iraq. They were supposed to be working together to ward off insurgents.

But before the shift ended, Merida shot the Iraqi to death and threw his body off the tower.

One bullet pierced Zaggam’s palm, which was burned by the gun blast, indicating that his hand was raised against the muzzle in self-defense, his family members said. A second bullet entered his back and shot through his stomach.

In a court-martial last month, Merida was sentenced to 25 years in prison, believed to be the harshest punishment yet imposed against a U.S. soldier for misconduct in Iraq.

The case is one of about a dozen murder and manslaughter cases filed against U.S. soldiers in Iraq this year. Coming on the heels of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, the spurt of cases has alarmed military officials and raised new concerns about the conduct of American soldiers in Iraq and the pressures they endure under prolonged deployments.

The killing has also driven a deep wedge between U.S. and Iraqi troops in the region, just as American officials are hoping to bring the security forces closer together to restore peace in Iraq.

Exactly what happened in the observation tower the night of May 11 may never be known.

Military officials said Merida was unavailable for comment, and they declined to provide details of the case, citing privacy concerns. His attorneys did not respond to a request for an interview. A transcript of his trial is expected to be released once a military judge approves it.

Zaggam is not alive to tell his side of the story. But his family and friends accuse Merida of attempting to sexually assault the Iraqi teenager. When Zaggam resisted, they say, the U.S. soldier killed him in a panic to cover it up.

“The American tried to rape him,” said Sgt. Mushtaq Abdul Salem, one of Zaggam’s supervisors at the Iraqi national guard base.

Merida first claimed that he killed Zaggam in self-defense because the Iraqi was trying to rob him, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. But when pressed by skeptical military investigators, Merida changed his story and said he shot Zaggam in a fit of rage after a consensual sexual encounter in the tower, officials said.

Merida said the Iraqi was attempting to blackmail him by threatening to expose the incident to Merida’s wife and his superior officers, according to an Iraqi who attended the trial. A psychiatrist for Merida testified that the outburst of violence was triggered by traumatic memories of sexual abuse as a child.

Just about the only thing the U.S. military and local Iraqis seem to share is a deep discomfort in discussing the murder because it deals with issues of homosexuality, taboo in both cultures.

Even after the U.S. publicly announced Merida’s 25-year sentence, one Iraqi national guard officer at the Ad Dawr base continued to insist that the entire incident was nothing but salacious “rumor.”

Merida’s mother said her son had told her very little about the incident. “I don’t know how it happened,” she said in a brief telephone interview from Biscoe, N.C.

At the Ad Dawr base, the incident has been a source of friction between U.S. and Iraqi forces. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers no longer work in lone pairs at the joint military facility, Iraqi soldiers say.

Resentments are starting to fade, but tension was extremely high in the hours and days after the killing.

When shots were heard about 10:30 p.m., all eyes in the camp turned toward the tower, just in time to see a figure tumble to the ground.

“Everybody immediately thought it was the Iraqi soldier that killed the U.S. soldier,” said Salem, the Iraqi national guard officer.

Budding camaraderie at the base quickly disintegrated into distrust and suspicion as U.S. soldiers turned their guns on some Iraqi counterparts in the chaos after the shooting.

Zaggam’s family was told by U.S. troops that he was being held in prison for attacking an American soldier.

“They lied to me,” said Amir Zaggam, one of the victim’s brothers. “We didn’t know the truth until the next morning when our brother Faris was summoned by Iraqi sergeants and soldiers to retrieve Falah’s body.”

“I swear to Allah, that even if I went to the States and found that Merida and killed him with my own hands, I still would not be satisfied,” said Faris, Zaggam’s older brother.

The U.S. military paid the family $2,200 in compensation, but the Zaggams said the money didn’t even cover the $4,500 they spent on a funeral.

The family bristles at Merida’s allegations that Zaggam engaged in a consensual sexual encounter and then tried to blackmail the soldier. They say Zaggam, who quit school in the third grade to work on his father’s farm and joined the national guard about a month before his death, was planning to marry one of his cousins. He was too small and young to pose a threat to Merida, family and friends said.

“He was so polite and religious and disciplined,” Faris said. “He was so shy, just like a little girl. No one ever believed for a second the American’s version of the story, that he demanded money.”

There are conflicting reports about whether Merida and Zaggam knew each other before the night of the murder.

Zaggam’s fellow soldiers said he was supposed to work at another guard post that night but asked to be moved to the observation tower.

In addition to the psychiatrist’s testimony about Merida’s history of being sexually abused as a child, Merida’s defense attorney presented medical evidence suggesting that the sexual encounter was consensual.

Zaggam’s relatives said they confronted Merida at the trial and the soldier tearfully accepted responsibility for the killing, saying he was concerned about the impact on his wife and 2-year-old son.

The military court reduced his sentence from 30 years to 25 years. He is to serve it out at the Ft. Leavenworth military correctional facility in Kansas.

“When I heard about the sentence I laughed because I don’t think he’ll ever have to serve the whole thing, despite the seriousness of his crime,” said Matar At-Shammari, an Iraqi national guard soldier and friend of the victim.

One U.S. soldier familiar with the case expressed sympathy for Merida’s story, but said it was no excuse for his action. “If the story is as I’ve heard, I think he got what he deserved,” he said.