A US soldier was sentenced on Saturday to 110 years in jail for raping and killing a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and slaying her family, the army said.
"Private First Class Jesse Spielman was sentenced to 110 years in prison with the possibility of parole for his involvement in last year's rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murders of her and three family members," a statement by the army said.
A court-martial found Spielman guilty on Friday of rape, conspiracy to commit rape, housebreaking with the intent to commit rape and four counts of felony murder.
Spielman pleaded not guilty on Monday to raping and killing Abeer Kassem Hamza al-Janabi and murdering her family, but he pleaded guilty to lesser charges including arson and obstruction of justice.
The trial in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, found that Spielman was among a group of soldiers who raped and killed Janabi, murdered her parents and sister and torched their home in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad, in March last year.
Spielman received a dishonorable discharge and lost all pay and allowances.
The alleged ringleader of the rape, Steven Green, will be tried in civilian court because he was discharged from the army before the crime came to light.
Federal prosecutors have said they will be seeking the death penalty in his case.
Sergeant Paul Cortez and Specialist James Barker, both of whom admitted to raping the girl, received life sentences after pleading guilty earlier this year.
Private Bryan Howard, who served as a lookout, was sentenced to 27 months in jail for acting as an accessory and helping to obstruct justice.
Revelations last year that the soldiers calmly plotted to rape a young girl they had seen walking down the street and to cover up their crime by killing her family and setting their house on fire undermined the already battered reputation of the US military.
In his court-martial, Cortez described how a fellow soldier pinned the girl to the ground and held her down while he raped her. Cortez then held al-Janabi down as Barker raped her.
During the trial, Cortez said he heard about four or five gunshots from the bedroom where Green had taken the girl's parents, Kassem Hamza Rachid al-Janabi and Fakhriya Taha Mohsine al-Janabi, and six-year-old daughter Hadeel Kassem Hamza al-Janabi.
Green emerged from the room saying he had killed them all and Cortez watched as Green raped the girl and then shot her in the head.
Barker then covered her body with a blanket and tossed a lighter to one of the other soldiers who set the blanket alight. The house was soon engulfed in flames, Cortez testified.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages