A member of a rogue US Army unit has been sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to killing an unarmed Afghan civilian in US custody in May last year.
Specialist Adam Winfield, 23, of Coral Gables, Florida, had been charged with premeditated murder, aggravated assault and conspiracy to commit murder in several incidents, including the deaths of three Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province.
He pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter in military court, along with one count of illegal use of marijuana, in exchange for his testimony against other soldiers accused in the killings.
On Friday, his rank was reduced to private and Winfield was stripped of pay and allowances, as well as discharged for bad conduct. Winfield will get credit for the approximately 507 days he has already served in prison.
Winfield’s defense attorney, Eric Montalvo, said he felt the sentence was fair.
“The government finally recognized that Adam Winfield was not a monster like Staff Sergeant [Calvin] Gibbs,” Montalvo said.
Winfield, who tried to blow the whistle on the murder plot, is among five soldiers accused of killing the civilians for sport and then planting evidence on the bodies to make it seem as though the victims had attacked the soldiers first.
He is a member of the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, also known as the Stryker Brigade, based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Seattle.
Another soldier in the unit, Private Jeremy Morlock of Wasilla, Alaska, was sentenced in March to 24 years in prison. Seven other service members have been charged with covering up the killings.
Montalvo said the killings and widespread hash use in the field showed the unit lacked leadership.
Under questioning by the judge, Colonel David Conn, Winfield admitted he had been aware he was committing a crime and that he failed to prevent it.
“I had means to prevent this from happening, sir. I had a number of options to choose from that day, sir, to take the action necessary,” Winfield said. “I failed because I was afraid, sir.”
He said he feared retribution from his superior, Gibbs, the alleged ringleader of the rogue group of soldiers.
Winfield said Gibbs threatened to kill him if he ever told anyone of the killings.
Morlock testified that Gibbs suggested Winfield could not be trusted to keep quiet about the killings, and that he was a “liability” that needed to be removed.
“He talked to me a couple times about the idea to take Winfield out, take him down to the gym and drop a weight on him,” or stage another kind of accident, Winfield’s platoon mate added.
During a patrol on May 2 last year, Gibbs pulled an Afghan civilian from his compound. Gibbs asked Winfield and Morlock: “Is this the one?”
The implication was clear that the soldiers would kill the civilian, Winfield said. Gibbs threw a grenade at the man, and then Winfield and Morlock fired their weapons at him. Morlock later planted an unexploded grenade near the body.
The platoon commander, Lieutenant Stefan Moye, was in a nearby compound and arrived on the scene when he heard the shots and explosions. Moye testified that he was told the dead man had thrown the grenade at the soldiers first and that he never had a reason to doubt that story.
A court martial for Gibbs is expected this fall.
The three killings, including the incident to which Winfield pleaded guilty, took place near Forward Operating Base Ramrod in Kandahar, where the Stryker Brigade was stationed.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees