GI Admits to Killing Hurt Iraqi Teenager

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=716&e=2&u=/ap/20041211/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. soldier pleaded guilty Friday to killing a severely wounded Iraqi teenager in what investigators say may have been a mercy killing, the latest of several similar incidents that have undercut efforts by the United States to win support among Iraqis and defeat a rampant insurgency.


The conviction of Staff Sgt. Johnny M. Horne Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, N.C., comes almost a month after the Nov. 13 killing of another wounded Iraqi found lying in a Fallujah mosque among the bodies of several people killed during a weeklong operation to retake that city from insurgents.


Horne is the first of four soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, based in Fort Riley, Kan., to face court-martial on charges of murdering Iraqis during fighting in Baghdad's impoverished Sadr City in August.


This week in Germany, a U.S. tank company commander was ordered court-martialed after being accused of shooting and killing a critically injured Iraqi driver for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on May 21 near Kufa, 100 miles south of Baghdad.

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