US soldier gets 45 days for Iraqi assaults

TEXAS - A United States Army lieutenant has been sentenced to 45 days in jail and loss of US$12,000 ($16,393.44) in pay for his part in assaults on Iraqi detainees that may have caused one to drown in the Tigris River.

Army 1st Lieutenant Jack Saville pleaded guilty to assault for having two Iraqis thrown at gunpoint into the Tigris in Samarra, Iraq, in January 2004 and was convicted of lesser assault in a separate incident at Balad, Iraq, in December 2003.

Based on a plea agreement with prosecutors, he could have faced nearly two years in prison, but Colonel Theodore Dixon gave him just 45 days and ordered his pay cut by US$2,000 a month for six months.

Saville's lawyer, Frank Spinner, told reporters afterward he would have preferred "non-judicial" punishment, but admitted, "I can't really complain about the sentence".

In a prepared statement Saville, a West Point graduate, apologised to the Iraqi victims and said he had learned to be a better person.

In January, Saville's co-defendant in the Tigris River incident, Army Sergeant Tracy Perkins, was convicted of assault and sentenced to six months in prison.

Both men initially faced manslaughter charges because one Iraqi tossed into the Tigris was believed to have died.

But soldiers testified in Perkins' trial that both men swam to safety and the death was faked.

A judge's order to confirm the death by exhuming what is said to be the body of the drowning victim was never complied with because of security problems, prosecutors have said.

Marwan Fadil, who survived the incident, testified in Perkins' trial that he and cousin Zaidoun Hassoun, 19, begged for mercy and soldiers laughed as Hassoun drowned.

They had been detained for violating curfew.

- REUTERS