Fragging is the deliberate or attempted killing of a soldier, usually a superior, by a fellow soldier. U.S. military personnel coined the word during the Vietnam War, when such killings were most often committed or attempted with a fragmentation grenade, to make it appear that the killing was accidental or during combat with the enemy. The term fragging now encompasses any deliberate killing of military colleagues.
The United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB), colloquially known as Leavenworth, is a military correctional facility located on Fort Leavenworth, a United States Army post in Kansas. It is one of two major prisons built on Fort Leavenworth property, the other is the military Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility, which opened on 5 October 2010. It reports to the United States Army Corrections Command and its commandant usually holds the rank of colonel.
About six months after the United States invasion of Iraq of 2003, rumors of Iraq prison abuse scandals started to emerge.
The Aberdeen Scandal was a military sexual assault scandal in 1996 at Aberdeen Proving Ground, a United States Army base in Maryland.
Wassef Ali Hassoun is a United States Marine who was charged with desertion for leaving his unit and engaging with others in a hoax to make it appear that he had been captured by terrorists on June 19, 2004, while serving in Iraq. Originally listed as having deserted, the Lebanese-born Marine was then thought to have been taken hostage by Iraqis who were thought to have befriended him.
The Queen's Lancashire Regiment (QLR) was an infantry regiment of the British Army, part of the King's Division. It was formed on 25 March 1970 at Connaught Barracks in Dover through the amalgamation of the two remaining Lancashire infantry regiments, the Lancashire Regiment and the Loyal Regiment. In July 2006 the regiment was amalgamated with two other Northern infantry regiments to form the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment.
Nadhem Abdullah was an 18-year-old unarmed Iraqi civilian who was allegedly assaulted and murdered by soldiers from the United Kingdom Parachute Regiment during the Occupation of Iraq in May 2003.
The Haditha massacre was a series of killings on November 19, 2005, in which a group of United States Marines killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians. The killings occurred in Haditha, a city in Iraq's western province of Al Anbar. Among the dead were men, women, elderly people and children as young as 1, who were shot multiple times at close range while unarmed. The ensuing massacre took place after an improvised explosive device exploded near a convoy, killing a lance corporal and severely injuring two other marines. The immediate reaction was to seize 5 men in a nearby taxi and execute them on the street.
The Hamdania incident refers to the alleged kidnapping and subsequent murder of an Iraqi man by United States Marines on April 26, 2006, in Al Hamdania, a small village west of Baghdad near Abu Ghraib. An investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service resulted in charges of murder, kidnapping, housebreaking, larceny, Obstruction of Justice and conspiracy associated with the alleged coverup of the incident. They were forced to drop many charges on the defendants. The defendants are seven Marines and a Navy Corpsman. As of February 2007, five of the defendants have negotiated pleas to lesser charges of kidnapping and conspiracy, or less, and have agreed to testify in these trials. Additional Marines from the same battalion faced lesser charges of assault related to the use of physical force during interrogations of suspected insurgents. Those charges were dropped.
Ehren Keoni Watada is a former first lieutenant of the United States Army, best known as the first commissioned officer in the US armed forces to refuse to deploy to Iraq. In June 2006, Watada refused to deploy for his unit's assigned rotation to Operation Iraqi Freedom, saying he believed the war to be illegal and that, under the doctrine of command responsibility, it would make him party to war crimes. At the time, he was assigned to duty with the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, as a fire support officer. He was brought before a court-martial in 2007 which ended in a mistrial; the Army subsequently discharged him under "Other-Than-Honorable-Conditions" (OTH) in 2009. An OTH discharge is the least favorable type of administrative discharge from the Army, and is reserved for a "pattern of behavior that constitutes a significant departure from the conduct expected of Soldiers of the Army."
Baha Mousa was an Iraqi man who died while in British Army custody in Basra, Iraq in September 2003. The inquiry into his death found that Mousa's death was caused by "factors including lack of food and water, heat, exhaustion, fear, previous injuries and the hooding and stress positions used by British troops - and a final struggle with his guards". The inquiry heard that Mousa was hooded for almost 24 hours during his 36 hours of custody by the 1st Battalion of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment and that he suffered at least 93 injuries before his death. The report later details that Mousa was subject to several practices banned under both domestic law and the Geneva Conventions. Seven British soldiers were charged in connection with the case. Six were found not guilty. Corporal Donald Payne pleaded guilty to inhumane treatment of a prisoner and was jailed for a year and dismissed from the Army. On 19 September 2006 with his guilty plea to inhumane treatment of Mousa, Payne became the first British soldier to admit to a war crime.
Corporal Donald Payne is a war criminal and former soldier of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment and later the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment of the British Army who became the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime under the provisions of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 when he pleaded guilty on 19 September 2006 to a charge of inhumane treatment. He was jailed for one year and dismissed from the Army.
Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder. The distinction between murder and manslaughter is sometimes said to have first been made by the ancient Athenian lawmaker Draco in the 7th century BC.
Michael (Stewart) Waddington is an American criminal defense lawyer specializing in court-martial cases, war crimes, and other serious felonies. He defended Sgt. Alan Driver, accused of abusing detainees, and Specialist Hunsaker in the Operation Iron Triangle Case.
The deaths of Phillip Esposito and Louis Allen occurred on June 7, 2005, at Forward Operating Base Danger in Tikrit, Iraq. Captain Phillip Esposito and First Lieutenant Louis Allen, from a New York Army National Guard unit of the United States 42nd Infantry Division, were mortally wounded in Esposito's office by a Claymore mine and died.
The Maywand District murders were the thrill killings of at least three Afghan civilians perpetrated by a group of U.S. Army soldiers from January to May 2010, during the War in Afghanistan. The soldiers, who referred to themselves as the "Kill Team", were members of the 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, and 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. They were based at FOB Ramrod in Maiwand, from Kandahar Province of Afghanistan.
United States v. Hasan K. Akbar was the court-martial of a United States Army soldier for a premeditated attack in the early morning hours of March 23, 2003, at Camp Pennsylvania, Kuwait, during the start of the United States invasion of Iraq.
Danny Chen was an American U.S. Army soldier who served during the War in Afghanistan. His suicide resulted in a military investigation and charges against eight US soldiers, ultimately with four being court martialed.
A video of U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban fighters was posted to websites in January 2012. The video was widely viewed on YouTube, TMZ and other sites, and caused anger and outrage in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
