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(01/11/05 4:32am)
FORT HOOD, Texas -- A military guard testified Monday that he saw Spc. Charles Graner Jr. punch an Iraqi detainee in the face a moment after a notorious photo was taken at Abu Ghraib prison.\nAnother witness said Graner was "laughing and having a good time" while making naked prisoners pose.\nSpc. Matthew Wisdom, the first witness in Graner's prisoner abuse court-martial, said Graner was among a number of guards who roughed up detainees on Nov. 7, 2003. Graner is the first soldier to be tried in the case, and prosecutors say he was the ringleader of the abuse.\nTestimony got under way Monday after opening statements.\nWisdom described a prominent photo from Abu Ghraib that showed the muscular Graner holding a detainee as if he were about to strike him in the face.\nThe witness said Graner cocked his arm while the picture was taken, and then he punched the detainee.\nAsked how hard Graner hit the prisoner, Wisdom said, "If I was that detainee, I know that it would be very painful."\nWisdom said he was urged to participate in the abuse, but he instead reported it to his immediate superior.\n"I was very upset," he said. "It made me kind of sick, almost. It didn't seem right."\nGraner, a 36-year-old former prison guard from Uniontown, Pa., is charged with conspiracy to maltreat Iraqi detainees, assault, dereliction of duty and committing indecent acts.\nThe defense contends that Graner was told by higher-ranking soldiers and intelligence agents to rough up the detainees prior to interrogation and that he had no choice but to obey despite personal misgivings.\nAn all-male jury of four Army officers and six senior enlisted men will decide his fate in what is expected to be a week-long trial. If convicted on all counts, he faces up to 17 1/2 years in a military prison.\nUnder military law, a conviction requires guilty votes by seven of the 10 jurors, all of whom have served in either Iraq or Afghanistan.\nWisdom testified that he did not see Graner when a naked Iraqi was allegedly forced to masturbate. That incident is the basis of one of the maltreatment charges against Graner.\nAnother member of the 372nd Military Police Company said Graner was not only there, but that the defendant photographed a simulated oral sex scene.\nPvt. Jeremy Sivits, who in May pleaded guilty to taking part in abuse, said Graner was in charge of stacking naked prisoners into a human pyramid with which he later posed for pictures.\n"He was trying to get the job done, but he was also laughing and having a good time," said Sivits, who told the court that his testimony against Graner was part of his plea deal.\nSivits received the maximum sentence of one year in prison, a reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge.\nTwo other members of Graner's unit who have made plea deals, Ivan Frederick and Megan Ambuhl, are also scheduled to testify against him.\nSgt. Joseph Darby, who first reported the alleged abuse, also is scheduled to appear. As many as three Iraqi detainees may testify via videotaped deposition.\nThree more soldiers from the 372nd also are awaiting trial at Fort Hood. One is Lynndie England, who in October gave birth to a child who Army prosecutors say was the result of a relationship with Graner.
(05/21/03 11:00pm)
VICTORIA, Texas -- Sheriff's deputies found the bodies of 17 suspected illegal immigrants early Wednesday in and around a truck trailer that was packed with dozens of people and left at a South Texas truck stop. Another person who had been locked inside died at a hospital.\nA suspect, believed to have been the driver of the tractor-trailer rig, was arrested hours later, Victoria County District Attorney Dexter Eaves said.\nAuthorities wouldn't immediately say if the people inside the trailer were illegal immigrants, though officials from the Mexican Consulate were at the truck stop to help identify the victims.\n"This case involves the greatest loss of life in recent history in what appears to be an alien smuggling case," said Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security at the Department of Homeland Security. Hutchinson said the federal agency was working with local authorities to help apprehend those involved. "This grim discovery is a horrific reminder of the callous disregard smugglers have for their human cargo," he said in Washington.\nDeputies found the bodies shortly after 2 a.m. when they answered a reported disturbance inside a refrigerated trailer at a truck stop near Victoria, said sheriff's investigator Stuart Posey.\nAs many as 40 other people may have fled the trailer into nearby fields and woods after the back door was opened, Sheriff Michael Ratcliff said. "Nineteen of those individuals have been located. They are now at our local community center, receiving medical attention, water and food," he said. He wouldn't say if the refrigeration unit had been operating.\nJerrel Robinowich, a spokesman for Detar Hospital Navarro, said about 60 people were in the back of the truck with little or no ventilation. "And you can just imagine the consequences of that." At least six men were taken to Detar Hospital, including one who was in critical condition. Eight others were taken to Citizens Medical Center, where one died. The men taken to Detar ranged in age from 20 to 47 and all suffered from heat-related injuries, Robinowich said. "It's brutally hot down here," he said. The National Weather Service said it was 74 degrees with 93 percent humidity at 2 a.m. The high Tuesday was 91, one degree shy of a record for the date.\nRatcliff wouldn't say how long the people may have been in the back of the trailer, where they came from and where they might have been heading. Asked if any children were among them, Ratcliff said, "We have not identified anyone, and we're not going to speculate on ages." He said the trailer had arrived at the truck stop on Highway 77, about 230 miles north of the Mexican border, about an hour before authorities were notified. The driver had unhitched the cab and left the trailer behind.\nBorder Patrol agents were searching the area on foot and with a helicopter.\nMarco Nunez, a spokesman for the Mexican Consulate in Houston, said consulate officials were in Victoria and working with the sheriff's office and immigration officials to identify the victims. "What happened is tragic but we have yet to confirm any of the details of the case," Nunez said.\nBodies were still in the back of the trailer late Wednesday morning as investigators gathered evidence from the scene.\nThere have been several cases of illegal immigrants dying in sealed containers as they are being brought secretly into the country. In October, workers at a grain elevator in Denison, Iowa, discovered the badly decomposed bodies of 11 migrants in a grain car that was being prepared for loading. Authorities estimated the four women and seven men had been trapped inside the grain car for at least four months and died of dehydration and hypothermia, or overheating. Last July, authorities found two dead immigrants and at least 28 others crammed into the back of a sweltering, unventilated tractor-trailer truck during a 600-mile trip from El Paso to Dallas. In 1987, Border Patrol agents found 18 Mexican immigrants dead and one barely alive in a boxcar left on a rail siding in Sierra Blanca, Texas. The survivor told authorities the man who smuggled them across the border put them aboard a boxcar in El Paso and locked the door. Temperatures in the boxcar reached 130 degrees.
(03/26/03 4:08am)
SAN ANTONIO -- Miss Massachusetts Susie Castillo was crowned Miss USA 2003 in the 52nd annual staging of the pageant Monday night.\nCastillo, 23, of Lawrence, Mass., replaces Shauntay Hinton, who represented the District of Columbia in last year's event.\nCastillo, an office manager and model, will be America's candidate in the Miss Universe pageant in June in Panama City, Panama.\nA fluent Spanish speaker with Puerto Rican roots, Castillo said she would use her crown to try to raise the stature of the nation's Hispanic population.\n"Hopefully I can erase some stereotypes about Latinos -- that they're not all housekeepers, drug dealers or hoodlums in the ghetto," she said. "Maybe there are some roles out there for a queen."\nMichelle Arnette, Miss Alabama, was first runner-up and home state favorite Nicole O'Brian of Texas was second runner-up.\nThe 51 contestants were trimmed down in advance to 10 semifinalists for Monday's evening gown and swimsuit competitions, but the results were not made public until the national broadcast on NBC.\nTelevision personalities Daisy Fuentes and Billy Bush, who co-hosted the event, dedicated the pageant to America's military forces fighting in Iraq.\nThe five finalists were asked questions written earlier by their fellow finalists.\nO'Brian's question was whether celebrities should use their status to speak out against the Iraq war.\n"I don't think it's good for them to go against the president and the war," she replied. "Have faith in our country, have faith in our president and have faith in our freedom."\nThis was the first year that the Miss USA was seen on NBC after the end of a long association with CBS. The pageant is now co-owned by NBC and Donald J. Trump, who was in San Antonio for the ceremony.\nThe winner's package includes extensive travel opportunities, a $20,000 wardrobe, a soap opera appearance and $45,000 scholarship to the School for Film and Television in New York.