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This trial was the third to come out of the May 11, 2007, shooting death of Genei Nesir Khudair Al-Janabil. The incident took place when an elite sniper-scout squad's mission went wrong near the city of Iskandariyah, which is 30 miles south of Baghdad. In separate courts-martial late last year, Sgt. Michael Hensley (who was the squad's leader) and another soldier, Pvt. Jorge Sandoval, were acquitted of murder charges. They were convicted of planting evidence...
...first day of testimony in what is expected to be a four day trial kicked off on Friday before an eight-person jury of both officers and enlisted soldiers, Vela's civilian defense attorney James Culp argued that his client was not guilty of murdering Genei Nesir Khudair Al-Janabi because, at the time Vela pulled the trigger, he was so sleep-deprived and dehydrated after four days of non-stop battlefield action that he was neither in control of his actions nor fully aware of what he was doing. "It was a terrible accident," Culp said outside the courtroom...
That's when Al-Janabi startled the group. There is conflicting testimony over who was supposed to be on guard at the time, but Sgt. Michael Hensley, the group's commanding officer, pinned the man down and searched him. Some time after that, Vela shot him in the head with a nine mm. pistol...
...testimony today, Hensley, one of the soldiers already acquitted for his role in the death (but guilty of planting the AK-47), endeavored to justify the killing, saying that Al-Janabi would not stop yelling, crying and "flopping around like a fish" despite repeated efforts to silence him. It was then that Hensley says he decided, for the safety of his men, that Al-Janabi had to die. "I thought that he was trying alert insurgents," Hensley said. "I felt like I had no choice or we would be further compromised." He says he asked Vela, who had a pistol...
...Al-Janabi's son, who testified briefly in court today, is similarly looking for punishment. When asked in an interview outside of court what sentence he thought would be the minimum acceptable one, he answered through a translator, "Execution. But since I understand that execution is not possible in this case, it should at least be a life sentence...