Court-Martial Under Way For Antiwar Soldier Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia Accused Of Desertion

His court-martial began Wednesday at Fort Stewart.

Before testimony begins, the judge must seat a panel of three to 10 people that is similar to a jury in a civilian trial. Lawyers will be able question and dismiss prospective panelists.

Mejia has claimed his unit was ordered to abuse Iraqi prisoners by using sleep-deprivation tactics.

He has also criticized the Iraq conflict as an "oil-driven war."

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WASHINGTON, May 20 (MASNET & News Agencies) - A U.S. Army soldier being tried on charges of deserting his unit in Iraq, has claimed he saw civilians die and Iraqi prisoners mistreated as early as May 2003.

Lawyers for Florida National Guard Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia last year argued that he walked away partly to avoid orders to abuse Iraqi prisoners, reports the Associated Press (AP).

"It wasn't what I had imagined as a soldier, that we were going to attack a defined enemy and that soldiers were going to be killed by enemies," said Mejia, whose court-martial begins Thursday at Fort Stewart, Georgia, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"I saw rather that a lot of innocent people died, a lot of civilians."

His attorneys spent Wednesday, the first day of Mejia's court-martial, asking a military judge to allow testimony from witnesses who could support Mejia's claim that his unit was ordered to abuse detainees, reports the AP.

But the judge ruled that only Mejia himself could raise the abuse issue before a military jury of officers and enlisted men that will begin hearing the case Thursday, the news agency reports.

Mejia, 28, claimed he saw as early as May 2003 prisoners being mistreated, an issue that has rocked the U.S. military since recent revelations of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.

Ramsey Clark, a former U.S. attorney general and one of Mejia's lawyers, said Mejia's unit was ordered to use sleep-deprivation tactics with blindfolded Iraqi detainees, in at least one instance by cocking a pistol next to their heads, reports the AP.

"In early May we went to a prisoner detention camp" in Al Assad, he said. Al Assad is an Iraqi air base occupied by U.S. forces.

"We began to see that prisoners were not allowed to sleep for several hours. Plus, there was psychological mistreatment. They were threatened with death, they screamed at them and they insulted them," Mejia said. "It was something that did not appear right."

Ordered to keep prisoners awake for up to 48 hours, soldiers would sometimes bang on walls with a sledgehammer, Mejia wrote, or would "load a 9 mm pistol next to their ear."

Clark, attorney general under President Lyndon B. Johnson, said Mejia was protected by international law to avoid duties that would have constituted war crimes. He compared Mejia's claims of prisoner mistreatment to the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, reports the AP.

"The United States is seeking to court-martial soldiers in [Iraq] for outrageous abuses at the same time it prosecutes a soldier halfway around the world because he did what he had a duty to do under international law," Clark said.

Capt. A.J. Balbo, the lead prosecutor, argued that even if Mejia saw prisoners abused in Iraq that would not justify fleeing the Army for five months, the news agency reports.

"This is about a soldier who deserted, who ran away," Balbo said. "While he went into hiding, he never raised these issues. Instead, he buried them in his conscientious objector packet."

Mejia filed for conscientious objector status with the Pentagon, his civilian lawyer, Louis Font of Brookline, Massachusetts, said in March.

He is seeking an honorable discharge and dismissal of all charges against him.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has reported what it called systematic abuse of Iraqi prisoners that amounted to torture, saying it first raised concerns with the United States more than a year ago.

Although graphic photos of the abuses only became public last month, sparking a scandal that continues to rock Washington, the Red Cross report was submitted in February and based on visits to Iraqi prisons between March 31, 2003, and October 24.

A Red Cross report specifically on abuses it witnessed at Abu Ghraib prison was delivered to U.S. military commanders in Iraq in November, but it was not taken seriously, and the allegations it made were not investigated until two months later, the Wall Street Journal said Wednesday quoting a senior U.S. Army official.

The Red Cross report stated there were attempts by the U.S. military to curtail the international group's unannounced visits to sensitive cellblocks at Abu Ghraib where interrogations were taking place, the daily said.

Three of seven U.S. soldiers accused of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib were to appear before courts martial in Iraq on Wednesday.

Mejia, who has dual Nicaraguan and Costa Rican nationality, said he was in Iraq from April to October 2003, when he obtained permission to return to the United States for two weeks.

He is charged with desertion after failing to return to his unit in Iraq after the two-week furlough in October, reports the AP.

Military law defines desertion as leaving the military with no intention to return or to "avoid hazardous duty or to shirk important service."

Mejia, born in Nicaragua and raised in Miami, is not a U.S. citizen but has permanent resident status.

In March, military officials said he would face a special court-martial, sparing him the risk of facing a death sentence, the harshest possible penalty for desertion.

A special court-martial means Mejia could receive no more than one year in a military prison and a bad conduct discharge if convicted, a military spokesman said.

He has been in the Florida National Guard for almost six years and served in the Army for three years before that.

"I can only say, whatever I did, I did because I felt like I had an obligation - moral and in some cases legal," Mejia told reporters outside the courtroom.

"I came back and I decided not to return [to Iraq] because I doubted the constitutional and international legality of the war, and because I was morally opposed to the things that I had seen over there as a soldier," he had said earlier.

"I'm at peace with my decision. I would have liked to have done something more, but at least I know that what I did was right."

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