A US Marine staff sergeant who urinated on dead Taliban insurgents and posed for photographs with the bodies has pleaded guilty to two charges in a military court, the Marine Corps said.
His sentence was a reduction in rank and forfeiture of $500 in pay.
Staff Sergeant Joseph Chamblin pleaded guilty at a special court martial at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to dereliction of duty for failing to properly supervise junior Marines. He also pleaded guilty to wrongfully urinating on a deceased enemy combatant.
The incident occurred during a counter-insurgency operation in Helmand Province in Afghanistan in July 2011. It came to light in January this year when a videotape of the incident was posted on YouTube and other websites.
The video showed four men in camouflage Marine combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them joked, “Have a nice day, buddy,” while another made a lewd joke.
The video was one of a series of offensive incidents involving U.S. service members that roused Afghan ire and led to heightened tensions between Washington and Kabul earlier this year.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the actions in the video as “inhuman” and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta telephoned him to denounce the incident as “deplorable” and promise an investigation.
Chamblin was charged with failing to properly supervise junior Marines, failing to require junior Marines to wear protective equipment, failing to report the misconduct of junior Marines, failing to report the negligent discharge of a grenade launcher, and failing to stop the indiscriminate firing of weapons, the Marine Corps said in a statement.
Chamblin waived his right to a jury and pleaded guilty to two counts before a military judge, the statement said. The judge levied a penalty that including 30 days in jail and a $2,000 fine, but because of a pretrial agreement Chamblin received a lesser sentence.
The maximum penalty under the agreement was a reduction in rank to sergeant and a forfeiture of $500 in pay for one month, the statement said.
The Marine Corps declined to release details about the evidence or the findings of the investigation because, it said, cases were still pending related to the urination video incident.
What the hell matters? Oh yeah it’s soo inhumane and deplorable but you know KILLING someone that’s not so bad. Peeing on him AWFUL, but you can kill him. Why do we even care? I mean we sent them out there to kill those men do you really think it makes sense to freak out about peeing on him? We clearly didn’t respect his life why would that soldier respect his death?
Actually US solider wants to urinate on Bush and Clinton who facilitated different wars in third world and sent themon the name of national security.Our Pakistani soldiers has full rights to do same like that to talibans or so called their deadly rivals as Pakistan army is still unable to control their actions and movement within Pakistan and due to these talibans for last 12 years Pakistani army men are on hard areas and still they are not successful of eradicating their militant circle in our tribal areas.
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