Sgt. Benderman Gets 15 Months for Lesser Charge

Debbie Clark covering the court-martial for Antiwar.com from Fort Stewart, Georgia, reports that judge Col. Donna M. Wright has convicted Sgt. Kevin Benderman of the charge of missing movement,” failing to convict on the charge of desertion.

Updated: Judge Wright sentenced Sgt. Benderman to 15 months. Observers felt this was a harsher sentence than expected for the lesser charge. He also received a dishonorable discharge and a reduction in rank to E-1. This is believed to be the harshest sentence yet for an Iraq resister. Judge Wright threw out the bogus charge of larceny (for clerical error in receiving combat pay) earlier in the week.

Military police immediately took Sgt. Benderman into custody.

Sgt. Kevin Benderman and his wife Monica leave his court-martial trial during a lunch break at Fort Stewart, Ga. (photo AP Photo/Stephen Morton)

By RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 49 minutes ago

FORT STEWART, Ga. - An Army mechanic who refused to go to Iraq while he sought conscientious objector status was acquitted of desertion Thursday but found guilty of a lesser charge and sentenced to 15 months behind bars.

Sgt. Kevin Benderman, 40, also was given a dishonorable discharge and a reduction in rank to private on the charge of missing movement. If he had been found guilty of desertion, he could have faced five years in prison.

Benderman failed to deploy with his 3rd Infantry Division unit in January, 10 days after he told Fort Stewart commanders he was seeking a discharge as a conscientious objector. He has previously said he refused to deploy to Iraq after his first combat tour during the 2003 invasion made him opposed to war.

By Camilo Mejia
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 28 July 2005

Fort Stewart, Georgia - When Sgt. Kevin Benderman went to Iraq on March of 2003, he saw the destruction of a nation, he saw a little girl with a burnt arm asking the soldiers for help they were ordered not to provide, he saw people drinking water from mud puddles, and he saw that Iraqis were regular people, just like himself, and that our military should not bring destruction to that country. What Sgt. Benderman saw in Iraq changed him in a way so profound, that after ten impeccable years in the Army, he decided to apply for conscientious objection. But Sgt. Benderman also spoke truth to the people about what is going on in Iraq, and he spoke about how the war is not destroying Iraq alone, but our own country as well. He spoke of how American soldiers are dehumanized by the war.

But today’s general Court-Martial did not deal with Sgt. Benderman’s war experience, nor with the dehumanization of America’s children in Iraq; it mostly dealt with a forty-five minute meeting Sgt. Benderman had with his Sgt. Major just an hour before his unit was to deploy to the Middle East, where they were to provide logistic support to American infantry units, and they were to train Iraqi police officers and military personnel.

This latest Iraq Health and Infrastructure Digest is a compilation of 9 articles covering a wide range of issues facing people in Iraq. Summaries are given as well as the full, or relevant portion of the articles.

Digest by David Smith-Ferri, Voices in the Wilderness

Voices in the Wilderness-NYC Moves to Bring Attention to Iraq’s Water Crisis

by Anna J. Brown, Voices in the Wilderness-NYC

In the “Bechtel’s Dry Run: Iraqis Suffer Water Crisis (2004)” report published by Public Citizen’s Water for All Campaign, its North American reader meets Ahmed Abdul Rida, a resident of Baghdad’s Sadr City. Mr. Rida, whose family members join a million others in dire poverty, is waiting for the two to three hours of electricity available per day to be activated so that he may use his family’s water pump. Since the water that he is able to pump is derived from the polluted waters of the Tigris River, what he and his family end up drinking is described as a “concentrated cocktail of pesticides, fertilizers, heavy metals from antiquated piping, and unknown amounts of depleted uranium, raw sewage and other chemicals from American and Iraqi munitions from the 1991 Gulf war, and the more recent Anglo-American invasion.” [1]

The story of Mr. Rida has been quite present to me during the month of July as I join friends and comrades in the WATER NOT WAR effort sponsored by Voices in the Wilderness of New York City. [2] When I ride the subway to each of our Wednesday and Saturday demonstrations, I meditate on the plight of the Rida family: What is it like to offer your young son or daughter a glass of brown colored and foul smelling water? What is it like to hand your elderly mother or pregnant wife a drink that may cause diarrhea, kidney stones, cholera and that damages the liver and brain? When I imagine the desperate thirst that wells up in a land where summer temperatures routinely top 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the necessity and the urgency of awareness about this devastating water crisis in Iraq brings to mind this insight of Dr. Martin Luther King’s: “We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be unless you are what you ought to be.” [3]

Latest Update on the case of Pere Jean-Juste, now incarcerated in the National Penitentiary, in Haiti July 24, 2005

July 24th

by Bill Quigley

“My body is in prison, but my soul is free.”
Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste from prison

Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste is being held in isolation in the Haitian National Penitentiary. I tried twice to visit but was not allowed. Likewise his Bishop tried to visit him but was not allowed. I was able to deliver his prayer book and some clothes and send a note in to him. He sent a note back that included the following:

“Avoka Bill, Thanks a lot to everyone for everything. I am in isolation section room I-05. I am really isolated but not from God. In spirit I remain together with you all. Keep the food program running. Justice shall prevail.
God’s blessings,
GJJ.”

The newest reported charges against Fr. Gerry are “public denunciation” and “inciting to violence.” The second charge is the same one that the unelected government has had pending against the former prime minister of Haiti, Yvon Neptune, who has been in prison for over a year with no trial in sight. These charges are as groundless as the prior ones - but are still not in writing and will probably change again.