Word: vela
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Part of an elite parachute infantry sniper-scout platoon, Sgt. Evan Vela is accused of murdering an unarmed Iraqi that his five-man squad had taken captive after the man breached their hideout. The squad was conducting a mission on May 11 last year near the city of Iskandariyah, which is 30 miles south of Baghdad and the southern-most point of Iraq's infamous "Triangle of Death." Vela is also accused of helping to plant an AK-47 on the body to make the kill look more justified. If found guilty of murder, he faces a maximum sentence...
...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...