Wikipedia:
On June 30, 2006, Green was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was detained without bond and ordered to be transferred to Louisville, Kentucky. On July 3, 2006, he was charged by United States Federal Court prosecutors with the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl named Abeer Qassim Hamza and the killing of her sister Hadeel (age 5), her father, Qassim Hamza Rasheed, and her mother, Fakhriya Taha Muhasen in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq, on March 12, 2006. On July 10th, four other soldiers on active duty were charged by the U.S. Military for the same crime. A sixth, SGT Anthrony Yribe, was charged with failing to report the attack but is not alleged to have been a direct participant.
According to a Federal affadavit, Green took three members of the family -- father, mother, and five year old daughter -- into a bedroom. Three shots were heard. "Green came to the bedroom door and told everyone, 'I just killed them. All are dead,'" the affadavit states. Green then raped and killed the fourteen year old Abeer Qassim Hamza.
Now, Associated Press is reporting that Green's crime may have been avoided if the military had taken mental illness seriously.
An Army private charged with the slaughter of an Iraqi family was diagnosed as a homicidal threat by a military mental health team three months before the attack.
Pfc. Steven D. Green was found to have "homicidal ideations" after seeking help from an Army Combat Stress Team in Iraq on Dec. 21, 2005. Green said he was angry about the war, desperate to avenge the death of comrades and driven to kill Iraqi citizens, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.
The treatment was several small doses of Seroquel - a drug to regulate his mood - and a directive to get some sleep, according to medical records obtained by the AP. The next day, he returned to duty in the particularly violent stretch of desert in the southern Baghdad suburbs known as the "Triangle of Death."
You have to ask how often a soldier has this complaint and how routine it is to treat it so lightly. If this is the most common way of dealing with these symptoms, it pays to remember that many of these barely treated soldiers will come home eventually.
Tags: news | politics | war | Iraq | Military | crime | Steven D. Green | Mental Illness
