BAGHDAD (AP) — A U.S. military jury cleared a Navy SEAL Thursday of failing to prevent the beating of an Iraqi prisoner suspected of masterminding a 2004 attack that killed four American security contractors.
The contractors' burned bodies were dragged through the streets and two were hanged from a bridge over the Euphrates river in the former insurgent hotbed of Fallujah, in what became a major turning point in the Iraq war.
The trial of three SEALs, the Navy's elite special forces unit, has outraged many Americans who see it as coddling terrorists.
Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas, 28, of Blue Island, Illinois, was found not guilty by a six-man jury of charges of dereliction of duty and attempting to influence the testimony of another service member.
The jury spent two hours deliberating the verdict.
Huertas is the first of three SEALS to face a court-martial for charges related to the abuse incident. All three SEALs could have received only a disciplinary reprimand, but insisted on a military trial to clear their names and save their careers.
The trial stems from an attack on four Blackwater security contractors who were driving through the city of Fallujah west of Baghdad in early 2004. The images of the bodies hanging from the bridge drove home to many the rising power of the insurgency and helped spark a bloody U.S. invasion of the city to root out the insurgents later that year.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/04/22/seal-trial-jury-deliberates-iraqi-abuse-case/?test=latestnews
