THE NATION - News from April 28, 2009
A former soldier charged with raping and killing a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and slaying her family set the girl’s body ablaze after shooting her several times, prosecutors said in opening statements at his trial.
Steven Dale Green, 23, of Midland, Texas, faces more than a dozen charges, including sexual assault and four counts of murder, stemming from the March 2006 attack in Iraq’s so-called Triangle of Death.
After he shot the girl in the face several times, Green used kerosene to set fire to her body, Assistant U.S. Atty. Brian Skaret said.
The defense, in its opening statement, asked jurors to consider the extraordinary circumstances that confronted soldiers while serving in Iraq. Green, who has pleaded not guilty, is being tried in a civilian court because he was discharged from the Army before being charged.
Green’s trial is being held in Paducah because of the western Kentucky city’s proximity to Ft. Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee border where Green was based as a private with the 101st Airborne Division. Other soldiers were prosecuted in military court.
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