US soldier faces abuse trial

A US soldier accused of beating an Afghan prisoner who later died was set to go to trial today, one day after a US military jury acquitted a fellow Army reservist of the same charge.

Sergeant Darin Broady, a member of the Cincinnati, Ohio-based 377th Military Police Company, is accused of hitting and kicking a shackled detainee known as Habibullah and then lying about it.

Opening arguments were to begin today following the seating of an all-male jury of four officers and four enlisted soldiers. Broady, of Jeffersonville, Indiana, faces charges of aggravated assault, maltreatment and making a false official statement.

A fellow reservist, Sergeant Keri Patterson, says she saw Broady use knee strikes, known as common peroneal strikes, on Habibullah and give him “a kind of kung-fu kick” to the abdomen.

Patterson said both Broady and Sergeant Christopher Greatorex beat Habibullah, who died at a detention centre in Bagram, Afghanistan, days after being taken into US custody.

No one has been charged in Habibullah’s death.

Greatorex was acquitted yesterday after his defence lawyers argued that Patterson was mistaken.

Greatorex, so far the only soldier charged in the Afghanistan abuse cases to be acquitted, is scheduled to testify for the defence in Broady’s trial. It was unclear whether Patterson, who was brought from Iraq to testify this week, would testify for the government in Broady’s trial.

Patterson has said she remembers few specific details of her time at Bagram, including the identity of a third soldier who was inside the cell when she says Habibullah was beaten.

Greatorex’s defence lawyers said Patterson’s lack of memory pointed to reasonable doubt. A jury yesterday acquitted the 34-year-old soldier of maltreatment, assault and false official statement.

Broady is the last of five soldiers from the Cincinnati reserve unit charged in the abuse cases to face a military judge.