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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Government Secrecy : International Relations : Iraq |
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Singer's Son First GI Tried for Refusing Duty |
Current rating: 0 |
by Jack Epstein
(No verified email address) |
21 May 2004
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Nicaraguan father wrote anthem for Sandinista rebels |
The son of a revolutionary Nicaraguan musician -- who says he deserted from the U.S. Army to avoid killing civilians or torturing prisoners in Iraq -- is the first war veteran to face an American court-martial for refusing further duty in that conflict-torn country.
Army Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, 28, whose jury trial began Wednesday in Fort Stewart, Ga., also is the first soldier to file for conscientious objector status since the war began.
If found guilty of desertion, Mejia faces a year in prison and a bad- conduct discharge.
Mejia's father, Carlos Mejia Godoy, is Nicaragua's most famous singer/songwriter. He participated as a cultural ambassador in the Sandinista revolution that overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979 and wrote the Sandinista hymn. The soldier's uncle, Luis Enrique Mejia Godoy, also is an internationally acclaimed singer/songwriter. The brothers have played in the Bay Area several times.
Mejia's older brother, San Francisco resident Carlos Alexis Mejia, says Camilo did not enlist in the Army in 1995 to defy his revolutionary father.
"He just wanted to get his education paid for," said Carlos Alexis, a 31- year-old rock guitarist. He is an aspiring poet, a vegetarian, a peaceful guy. It's weird for us."
Mejia is a dual citizen of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, the latter his mother's birthplace. He settled in Miami in the early 1990s and, like about 40, 000 American soldiers, is not a U.S. citizen but is a permanent resident.
Mejia is restricted to the Fort Stewart base and is barred from speaking with individual reporters. But one of his attorneys, Tod Ensign, says his client deserted during a furlough in the United States after witnessing American soldiers kill a 10-year-old boy and after being ordered to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation at al Assad airbase near the Baghdad airport by using sleep-deprivation tactics on blindfolded Iraqis.
"The fighting and killing of civilians and illegal interrogations were the primary reasons" for Mejia's desertion, said Ensign, who also is the director of Citizen Soldier, a nonprofit GI advocacy group based in New York.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, another Mejia lawyer, said that in at least one instance, a pistol was cocked next to prisoners' heads. "We're prosecuting soldiers over there for the very thing we're prosecuting him (Mejia) for not going back over there to do," Clark told reporters during a break in the day-long hearing.
Ensign and Clark tried to make Mejia's court-martial a test case for soldiers who are adamant about avoiding duties that would constitute war crimes. "When you don't respect international standards, the kind of things that happened at Abu Ghraib happen," he said.
The judge, however, Col. Gary Smith, ruled Wednesday that the special court-martial would be limited to whether Mejia deserted when he refused to return to duty.
On Wednesday, co-counsel Louis Font also argued that the military should not have accepted Mejia because a 19th century treaty between the United States and Costa Rica exempts Costa Rican citizens from "compulsory service" in the U.S. military. Judge Smith denied that motion as well after Capt. A. J. Balbo, the lead prosecutor, said Mejia never requested an exemption before his court-martial and voluntarily went to fight in Iraq, where he accepted a promotion.
Mejia is a reservist with the Florida National Guard; he served in the Sunni triangle from April to October last year with Charlie Company of the 124th Infantry Regiment. When he returned on a two-week furlough, he went into hiding for five months before surrendering in Massachusetts with the help of the Peace Abbey, an anti-war organization.
When he returned to Florida in March, he told reporters: "I don't think we're fighting terror in Iraq. I think we're fighting a war for oil, based on lies -- lies about weapons of mass destruction, and connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.''
He also told the Miami Herald: "I am not against the military. The military has been my family. My commanders are not evil but this war is evil. I did not sign up for the military to go halfway around the world to be an instrument of oppression.''
Teresa Panepinto, the GI rights program coordinator for the Oakland-based Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, says the Mejia case may be a harbinger of things to come. She says that 25 percent of the 3,000 calls her group's hot line receives monthly are questions about the consequences of going AWOL. Fourteen percent are about how to apply for conscientious objector status.
"We are hearing more and more from soldiers who have come back from Iraq, " said Panepinto, whose nonprofit organization counsels members of the armed forces on how to get out of the military. "The vast majority seem to be severely traumatized and looking at their options."
Several have even left for Canada, conjuring up images of Vietnam.
Last January, Army Pvt. Jeremy Hinzman from the 82nd Airborne Division became the first American soldier to seek asylum in Canada. In March, he was followed by another 82nd Airborne private, Brandon Hughey. They have been granted temporary residence in Canada, and hearings will be held on their cases this summer.
Army spokeswoman Lt. Col. Pamela Hart said that since 2002, there have been 88 requests for conscientious objector status, 48 of which were approved. She also said the Army recorded 2,762 desertions last year, a significant drop from 2002, when 4,007 deserted. "The numbers show that (the desertion rate) is not based solely on being at war and that there are other issues," she said.
Carlos Alexis Mejia said his brother joined the Florida National Guard in 1998 following a three-year hitch with the Army and was several months away from graduating from the University of Miami with a degree in psychology, and completing his eight-year military obligation, when the United States invaded Iraq.
Attorney Ensign says Mejia went to Iraq hoping he would be home in less than three months because noncitizens are not allowed to serve in the Army longer than eight years. "He had 70 days left and figured he would keep his head down until they shipped him home," said Ensign.
But, like tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, Mejia got caught up in the Pentagon's "stop-loss" orders, which keep troops in Iraq to stave off troop depletion through retirement and discharge.
In March, Carlos Alexis Mejia flew to Massachusetts to join his famous father at a pacifist service in support of his kid brother. Always the revolutionary, Mejia Godoy performed one of his most well-known compositions - - "Missa Campesina," or "Peasant Mass," a piece that draws on the ideas of liberation theology and views religion in Latin America from the perspective of the poor and the oppressed.
"My father knows that Camilo enlisted to further his education," said Carlos Alexis Mejia, whose band, La Raza Oculta, will perform a benefit concert on June 5 at the Women's Building in San Francisco to raise money for his brother's defense fund. "He is proud that his son is willing to stand by his principles and face whatever consequences."
©2004 San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/ |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
Comments
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GI Who Protested 'Oil-Driven War' Found Guilty Of Desertion |
by Russ Bynum
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 May 2004
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FORT STEWART, Ga. -- A military jury convicted a U.S. soldier Friday of desertion for leaving his combat unit in Iraq in protest of an ''oil-driven'' war.
Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia of the Florida National Guard was found guilty by a jury of four officers and four enlisted soldiers. Jurors deliberated almost two hours.
He faces up to a year in jail and a bad conduct discharge and was to be sentenced Friday afternoon.
Mejia, 28, failed to return after a two-week furlough in October and was missing from the Army for five months before turning himself in in March.
Mejia, who has called the conflict an ''oil-driven war,'' testified Thursday that he disobeyed orders to return to his unit because he planned to seek status as a conscientious objector.
Mejia said he became upset after seeing civilians hit by gunfire and watching an Iraqi boy die after confusion over which military doctor should treat him.
He also said he also believed he should have been discharged under a National Guard regulation limiting service of non-U.S. citizens to eight years. Mejia, a citizen of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, served for nine years.
Military prosecutors argued Mejia, an infantry squad leader, abandoned his troops and didn't fulfill his duty.
''The defense says he accomplished all his missions. Except the most important one showing up,'' lead prosecutor Capt. A.J. Balbo said in closing arguments.
Defense lawyer Louis Font said Mejia made ''an honest mistake of fact.''
''This case clearly is about what was in the accused's mind,'' Font said. ''He had an honest and reasonable view that because he had become a conscientious objector, he would not be required to serve in Iraq anymore.''
After the verdict was read, Mejia hugged his mother, Miami peace activist Maritza Castillo, and she kissed him on the cheek.
''He feels that he still did the right thing, and he did it under his conscience and his beliefs. His feelings have not changed,'' Castillo said.
Mejia's lawyers had argued that he walked away from the war partly to avoid orders to abuse Iraqi prisoners, such as using sleep-deprivation tactics with blindfolded detainees, and in at least one instance by loading a pistol next to their heads.
But the judge, Col. Gary Smith, ruled that evidence on the ''legality and morality'' of prisoner treatment in Iraq was irrelevant to the desertion charge that Mejia shirked his duty by leaving the Army for five months.
Mejia's application to be deemed a conscientious objector is being considered separately from his court-martial on the desertion charge.
In his objector application, he claims he saw Iraqi prisoners treated cruelly when he was put in charge of processing detainees last May at al-Assad, an Iraqi air base occupied by U.S. forces.
© Copyright 2004 Associated Press
http://www.ap.org |
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Re: Singer's Son First GI Tried for Refusing Duty |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
23 May 2004
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One Year??? Now I am not saying this confused coward should have been shot, but we put people in jail for alot longer than this. This is a bogus sentence and will encorage more desertion.
Jack |
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Re: Singer's Son First GI Tried for Refusing Duty |
by Tara Murphy
tarafine (nospam) sbcglobal.net (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
05 Jun 2004
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IMHO Mejia is an opportunist who joined the military for its benefits, but was unwilling to repay the debt when called upon for combat duty. He dishonored the men who served under him by abandoning them. He has still not addressed that issue, nor did he make any attempt to contact them when he was AWOL. He also sees the increasing ill-feeling towards the war as an opportunity to play the role of martyr to camouflage the fact that he deserted because he was afraid. Period. |
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