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FORT LEE - A soldier was convicted yesterday of brutally beating an Iraqi detainee with a baseball bat and attempting to cover it up.
The verdict arrived just a day after his court-martial began.
A six-person military jury found Sgt. 1st Class Timothy L. Drake guilty of assault and two counts of making false statements, after another soldier testified that he saw Drake, 40, strike a detainee with the aluminium bat, then say to him: "[Soldier's name] Come get a piece of this."
Also yesterday, a US Marine reservist has been charged with murdering an Iraqi army soldier while they stood watch together at a security post in Fallujah, an attorney said.
Lance Corporal Delano Holmes, 21, is accused of stabbing Munther Jasem Hassin to death last December.
The struggle began in the pre-dawn darkness after Hassin allegedly opened his cellphone and then lit a cigarette, attorney Steve Cook said.
The men were not supposed to display any illuminated objects because of the threat of sniper fire, and Holmes made repeated attempts to make Hassin extinguish the cigarette, Cook said.
- Reuters
