Two US Army soldiers face murder charges in a military trial in Baghdad for shooting and killing a badly wounded Iraqi teenager mistaken for an insurgent by US troops, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday on its Web site. The newspaper quoted the two Army staff sergeants as saying they shot and killed the Iraqi boy in a "mercy killing" as he lay moaning on the ground in an August incident in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City.
The two soldiers told US officials that they killed the teenager in order to "put him out of his misery," the newspaper said.
But Iraqi witnesses, including a relative of the dead boy who had pleaded for US troops to help him, were enraged by the killing, which seemed certain to reignite a debate about the conduct of US troops in Iraq in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
Staff Sgt. Cardenas Alban, 29, of Carson, California and Staff Sgt. Johnny Horne Jr., 30, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina both of the Army's 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment face military court proceedings in Baghdad to determine if there is enough evidence for court martial, the Los Angeles Times reported.