Us Army Sergeant Found Guilty Of Murdering Afghan Civilians

TACOMA, WASHINGTON: A US army sergeant was convicted by court-martial on Thursday of murdering unarmed civilians and cutting fingers from their corpses as ringleader of a rogue platoon in Afghanistan's Kandahar province.

A five-member jury panel returned a guilty verdict on all counts against Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, 26, capping an 18-month investigation of the most egregious case of atrocities US military personnel have been convicted of committing during a decade of war in Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials have said the misconduct exposed by the case, which evolved from a probe of drug abuse within Gibbs' Stryker Brigade infantry unit, damaged the image of the United States around the globe.

Photographs entered as evidence in the case showed Gibbs and other soldiers casually posing with bloodied Afghan corpses, drawing comparisons with the inflammatory Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq in 2004.

The verdict by the jury panel -- two enlisted personnel and three officers -- followed a week and a half of testimony at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma. The proceedings then moved directly into the penalty phase.

Gibbs, from Billings, Montana, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

He was convicted on three counts of premeditated murder in the slayings of Afghan villagers last year that were disguised as legitimate combat engagements. Prosecutors said Gibbs acted as the chief instigator behind those killings and other assaults by members of his self-described " kill team."

Besides charges of murder, conspiracy and other offenses, he was found guilty of beating a soldier who reported hashish use to superiors and of military code violations for cutting fingers off bodies as war trophies.

Gibbs had maintained he was innocent of murder, insisting that two of the killings for which he was charged were in self-defense and that he played no role in the other. He denied allegations of planting weapons near the bodies.

Taking the stand in his own defense last Friday, Gibbs said he had "disassociated" himself from his actions while in combat and likened the removal of fingers from dead bodies to the taking of antlers from a deer.

But prosecution witnesses portrayed him as a blood-thirsty renegade who intimidated fellow soldiers and harbored a deep, ethnic hatred of the very people US troops were sent to protect from Taliban forces.

His chief accuser was the ex-corporal described as Gibbs' right-hand man, Jeremy Morlock, who pleaded guilty to murder for his role in the same three killings and was sentenced in March to 24 years in prison under a deal with prosecutors to obtain his cooperation in the case.

Five soldiers in all from the infantry unit formerly called the 5th Stryker Brigade were accused of murder, although Gibbs and Morlock were the only charged with more than one killing.