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.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS