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Ex-US soldier gets life in prison for Iraqi assault

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-05 04:36

LOUISVILLE:A federal judge sentenced a former U.S. Army soldier to life in prison without parole on Friday for the gang rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and the slaying of her family in 2006.

Steven Green, 24, was tried and convicted in April as a civilian on murder, rape and obstruction of justice charges because his arrest came after he was discharged from the Army for a "personality disorder."

The former Army private escaped a death sentence when jurors could not agree on his punishment. Judge Thomas Russell of the U.S. District Court in Paducah, Kentucky, handed down the life sentence.

Green led a gang of five U.S. soldiers who invaded the Iraqi family's home in Mahmudiya, 20 miles (30 km) south of Baghdad, on March 12, 2006, intending to rape the girl, 14-year-old Abeer Kassem Al-Janabi.

While two fellow soldiers assaulted the girl, Green shot and killed the girl's mother, father and six-year-old sister in a bedroom before taking his turn in the gang rape, according to trial testimony. He then shot the girl three times in the head and set her body ablaze.