Trial News

Sergeant Acquitted of Driving a Suicide

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — A military jury on Monday acquitted a sergeant on the most serious charges in the death of Pvt. Danny Chen, a Chinese-American from Manhattan who killed himself last year while deployed in Afghanistan, but found him guilty on lesser charges.

Read the entire article here.

Heartbroken mother of Pvt. Danny Chen says he was 'the best son in the world' at sergeant's court-martial trial

The heartbroken mother of a New York Army private believed to have killed himself because of hazing from fellow soldiers took the witness stand Tuesday to profess “he was the best son in the world.”

Su Zhen Chen, 49, tearfully testified in the court martial trial of Sgt. Adam Holcomb, who is accused of driving her son, Pvt. Danny Chen, to suicide by physically and mentally abusing him.

“I don’t even know if my son killed himself or not, or if somebody else killed him,” the mother testified.

Read the entire story here.

S.I. dad says Marine son victim of hate, just like Pvt. Danny Chen

Danny Chen and Hamson Daniels McPherson grew up separated by New York Harbor and died just months apart under mysterious circumstances while serving their country.

Chen, 19, was an Army private from the lower East Side.

McPherson, 21, was a Marine private from Staten Island.

Both their deaths were initially ruled suicides.

And both men, their families claim, were driven to the brink by racist hazing and abuse inflicted on them by comrades in arms.

Read the entire story here.

Military Matters Podcast: Interview With Elizabeth OuYang

Link to OCA-NY, where you can sign the petition to have the 32 Hearing moved from Afghanistan to the United States so that Danny Chen's family may attend.

Courts-martial recommended for 4 more in Pvt. Danny Chen’s death but involuntary manslaughter counts are dropped

Courts-martial have been recommended for four more soldiers accused of hounding Manhattan Pvt. Danny Chen to his death, but they won’t be tried for involuntary manslaughter.

Instead, the foursome faces still serious but lesser charges that could result in prison sentences upon conviction, the military said.

Chen’s immigrant parents, who live on the Lower East Side, were expected to address the latest development in the tragic case later Tuesday.

In January, family friends cried coverup after Army investigators dropped the charge of involuntary manslaughter against one of the alleged ringleaders, Spc. Ryan Offutt.

Staff Sgt. Andrew VanBockel, Sgt. Jeffrey Hurst, Sgt. Adam Holcomb and Spc. Thomas Curtis will be prosecuted for charges including dereliction of duty, maltreatment, negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, assault, communicating a threat and violation of a general regulation, the military said Tuesday.

Read the entire story here.

PVT Danny Chen- What You Can Do To Help

Dear Members and Supporters:

 We have received an outpouring of support and offers to help seek justice for Private Danny Chen and his family and to stop hazing in the military.  Below is a list of action items you can do to help.
Sign OCA-NY's petition demanding that the court martials be convened in the U.S. (click here)
Spread the word about this petition.

Contact OCA-NY,  oca-ny@oca-ny.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , with stories about hazing in the U.S. military

If you belong to an organization, let OCA-NY know if you can commit to sending one person to observe the court martials, which if held in the U.S. will likely take place in Fort Wainwright, Alaska, the location from which Danny's unit was dispatched to Afghanistan.

If you know of families or churches in Alaska who could house people attending the court martials, please let OCA-NY know.

Hold a teach-in at your home, church, school, or organization about Danny Chen's case and hazing in the army.  Outreach to our youth is critical-they must be informed.  OCA-NY can help provide suggested speakers.

Write or call your local city council person to introduce a resolution calling for reforms in the army dealing with hazing and effective diversity training. Currently, New York City's Councilwoman Margaret Chin introduced a resolution calling for reforms of the military's diversity training. (click here)

Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or online publication to call for a greater awareness about Pvt. Danny Chen's case.

Write songs, poetry, plays, or other creative works to help spread the word about Danny's case.
Let OCA-NY know of interested persons who would like to be added to our listserves to receive updates on Danny Chen's case.

Join OCA-NY as a member, see www.oca-ny.org to download our membership form or join a local OCA chapter in your area, see www.ocanational.org for more information.

Please stay tuned. We will be announcing more public awareness projects in coming weeks that will need your input and suppport, particularly what you can do on a federal level to help push reforms in the military. If you have additional ideas on how people can help, please let OCA-NY know.

Thank you,

Liz Ou Yang, President OCA-NY

--submitted by Bonnie Palecco

Death of Private Danny Chen

Private Chen’s Family Learns More About Hazing by Fellow G.I.’s

The officers in command of the battalion of Pvt. Danny Chen, who the Army says committed suicide in Afghanistan in October after being hazed by fellow soldiers, were aware of the harsh treatment he had repeatedly received, his family said Thursday.       

The family had already been told by investigators that other soldiers had taunted Private Chen with racial epithets and forced him to crawl on the ground while they pelted him with rocks. But this week, new details of his treatment were disclosed to the family.

At a news conference, family members and their supporters said Private Chen had been mistreated virtually every day of his six-week stint in Afghanistan. They said he had been called a “gook,” a “chink” and “dragon lady.” He was also forced to wear a green helmet and shout orders in Chinese, to a battalion that had no other Chinese-American soldiers, they said.

Read the entire story here.

Editor's note:  Many of the families in this group can relate to this story.  Our sons and daughters were subjected to similar group bullying within the military services.  We have been kept in the dark.  The details have been buried by the military, even though we have spent years and a great deal of money in legal fees to try to get answers.

We are happy that, at last, a light in being shone on these abuses.  We are glad that politicians and the local communities of victims are coming forward and forcing  public attention. 

We'd like to think that we have had some part in getting this change for the better.

Soldier’s Death Raises Suspicions in Chinatown

From The New York Times:

"And though military officials have reassured the Chens that a thorough investigation is being conducted, their grief is laced with suspicion, shared by their supporters in the local Chinese community, that they will never learn the truth."       

"From the little that the military has told them, family members believe that investigators are focusing on suicide as the cause of death. If that is the determination, the case may echo that of another Asian-American, Lance Cpl. Harry Lew, a Marine from California who killed himself in April in Afghanistan after fellow Marines allegedly subjected him to a brutal hazing. Last week, the Marines were ordered court-martialed. "      

Read the entire story by clicking here.

Pvt. Keiffer Wilhelm's parents blame Army cruelty

Shortly after a 19-year-old Fort Bliss soldier killed himself with a gunshot to the head in 2009 while serving in Iraq, four of his unit leaders were charged with cruel treatment of their soldiers.

The case of Pvt. Keiffer Wilhelm opened a discussion on both the Army's training procedures and the problem of suicide among its soldiers. And none of the parents involved were happy with the outcome.

Read the entire story here.

Radio Discussion

Bullying in the Military, Part 2 of radio discussion
Click here to listen.

ONE ARMY, TWO FAILURES

Maltreated and hazed, one soldier is driven to take his own life

By
Megan McCloskey

Stars and Stripes

Published: June 7, 2011

For Army Spc. Brushaun Anderson, there was no escaping his torment.

The senior noncommissioned officers who ruled his life at a remote patrol base in Iraq ordered him to wear a plastic trash bag because they said he was “dirty.”

They forced him to perform excessive physical exercises in his body armor over and over again.
They made him build a sandbag wall that served no military purpose.

Anderson seemed to take it all in stride. Until New Year’s Day 2010, when the once-eager 20-year-old soldier locked himself inside a portable toilet, picked up his M4 rifle, aimed the barrel at his forehead and pulled the trigger.

Anderson left behind a note lamenting his failures in the military, and some soldiers in his unit immediately said that Anderson had been driven to kill himself by leaders bent on humiliating him.

Read the rest of the story here.

Russian social networking site speaks for dead soldiers

By Katia Moskvitch Science and technology reporter, BBC News

"Hello, my name is Nikolay, I am 24 years old and I died serving in the Russian army."

Twenty-seven young men, many in military uniform, gaze out from a page on the social networking site Odnoklassniki.ru - a Russian equivalent of Facebook.

Many smile, looking happy and proud.

All of them have died while in the army - but only a few perished in actual combat operations in Chechnya or Dagestan.

A non-governmental charity, The Mother's Right Foundation, has set up the unusual page. It says that the majority died from extreme bullying, crime, bad living conditions or the abnormal psychological climate in the army.

Some were killed by fellow servicemen, shot at point-blank range or beaten to death.

Others were forced to commit suicide by constant violence and abuse, the charity claims.
Read the rest of the story here.

Janeczko Interview, Part One

To listen to the 5/25/11 Interview, click here and then on the latest interview on the right hand side of The Truth Has Changed page.

War Torn

The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce

The last days of Private Scheuerman

Trailer for War Torn

US Soldiers 'Killed Afghan Civilians for Sport and Collected Fingers as Trophies'

Published on Thursday, September 9, 2010 by The Guardian/UK
Soldiers face charges over secret 'kill team' which allegedly murdered at random and collected fingers as trophies of war
by Chris McGreal

Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret "kill team" that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies.

To read the entire story, click here.
Editor's note: I've reprinted this story for those who find it hard to believe that soldiers are capable of murder and for those who find it hard to believe that soldiers would beat up (and possibly murder) another soldier who has reported wrongdoing. My own son was killed after being beaten up and harassed repeatedly for reporting illegal activity in the Army. The cover up in his case continues. This story allows the light of day to shine in on this rotten little secret kept by the Military Services for some twisted reason.

Mother Wants Justice in Son's Death

25 August 2010
By Alexander Bratersky

It's been more than seven years since the border guards, a unit of the Federal Security Service, returned Alma Bukharbayeva's teenage son in a sealed casket.

Marat Burtubayev, 18, was serving with his unit in the Khabarovsk region, near the Chinese border, for his required two years of military service. He was eight months into his service when commanders said the young recruit hanged himself in January 2003.

But what they did not explain — and what Bukharbayeva has been trying to learn ever since — is what happened to her son's internal organs.

The FSB returned Burtubayev's body to his family in the Omsk region of West Siberia shortly after his death so he could be buried in accordance with Muslim traditions. But when the family's imam examined the body, he found that most of the vital organs were missing and that his torso had been crudely resewn.

“The bridge of his nose was broken and there were stitches running up his body,” Bukharbayeva, a nurse by profession, said in a video appeal for justice posted on YouTube last year.

She also said her son's neck showed no evidence of the rope he allegedly used to hang himself. Her suspicion that the border guards were trying to hide something only grew after she received another letter from the commanding officer saying her son “tragically died in the line of service.”

An official examination of the body was not conducted. A military court in the Khabarovsk region later convicted private Ruslan Belonogov, who was just arriving to begin his service, of hazing Burtubayev and sentenced him to two years in prison.

But Bukharbayeva believes that Belonogov was innocent and has since said ultimate responsibility lies with Omsk Governor Leonid Polezhayev and even then-President Vladimir Putin.

On Tuesday, an Omsk city court sided with Polezhayev — regional boss since 1995 — in a civil defamation suit. Bukharbayeva was ordered to retract allegations she made during a rally outside the city's main recruitment office in June.

Joined by a group of mothers, Bukharbayeva had carried a sign reading: "Putin, Polezhayev are killers of our children. Kill us, mothers."

Polezhayev's office was not immediately available to comment on the ruling. But a spokesman for the governor, Roman Onopriyenko, told The Moscow Times on the eve of the decision that the suit was filed "only because incorrect information was widely distributed.”

The civil suit "was made as delicate as possible, since the governor understands the mother's grief,” Onopriyenko said. Polezhayev sued as a private citizen and was seeking only a retraction, he said.

The governor cannot be blamed for the death, as it happened in another region, Onopriyenko said.

But Bukharbayeva said Polezhayev — as chairman of the local draft commission — was responsible for soldiers drafted into the military or security services from the region.

“By suing, he didn't shame me, he just shamed himself,” she told The Moscow Times by telephone from Omsk, following the court's ruling.

Bukharbayeva, who said she planned to appeal, was joined in court by two other women who lost their sons in the same FSB border guard garrison.

Galina Bereluk, mother-in-law of Omsk native Roman Suslov, said she did not believe that her son hanged himself in May.

"He wasn't afraid to serve. He wanted to serve," she said by telephone.

Suslov's body contained the same stitch as Burtubayev's, she said, and the family believes that he was killed so his organs could be harvested.

An investigation into Suslov's death is ongoing, but chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky has told reporters that investigators are not looking into the alleged organ theft.

According to Pamyat, an Omsk-based soldiers' mothers group, seven border guard recruits have died in the Khabarovsk region since 2003.

Valentina Aparina — whose son Alexei was also reported to have committed suicide after a year and a half of service in the same unit — said officials told her to be satisfied with financial compensation and a tomb to honor her son.

“They said to us, 'What else do you need?' But we just want to find the truth,” Aparina said by telephone from Omsk.

Khabarovsk regional prosecutors opened an investigation in 2004 amid allegations that a local hospital — in a district not far from the FSB garrison — had taken organs from patients without their approval.

More than 100 kidneys were taken from patients over several years, Interfax reported at the time, citing prosecutors.

But the case never reached court. A spokesman for the Khabarovsk regional branch of the Investigative Committee said Tuesday that the relevant materials had been archived and he could not immediately comment. The border guard service could not be reached for comment.

Presidential human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin made an appeal in the case in May 2006, asking Fridinsky, the military prosecutor, to conduct a probe into the investigation of Burtubayev's death.

Fridinsky's office said Belonogov's conviction for hazing — ultimately leading to the alleged suicide — was justified. The official response, based on photographs of the body, said there was no evidence that organs had been removed from Burtubayev's body.

“The traces on the body, believed to be damage, were post-mortem changes of the soft tissue,” Fridinsky wrote in a letter published by Novaya Gazeta in 2006.

Mother's Right, a group helping parents of soldiers who die noncombat deaths, has seen other cases where murky deaths have been presented as suicides. Violent deaths, including from hazing, are common in the military, which has since cut its mandatory service to one year.

"The key is having an independent medical evaluation, which would justify the parents' allegations," said Veronika Marchenko, the group's head.

Marchenko said her organization does not have any proven evidence that organs have been harvested from soldiers.

But the practice is not unheard of in nearby China. United Nations human rights officials have regularly investigated cases of alleged organ theft there, particularly from practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.

Burtubayev's grandmother, Mariam Kunanbayeva, told The Moscow Times that she also did not believe that her grandson would have hanged himself.

A week before the death, Burtubayev was preparing to celebrate the New Year, she said. “He wrote a letter to me to send him some money to buy sweets for the holiday. I sent him 100 rubles," or about $3, she said.

Finding justice may be an uphill battle for the family, which is struggling to survive on Bukharbayeva's monthly salary of 14,000 rubles ($450) since her husband's death last year. The family lives in a three-room apartment on the outskirts of Omsk, leased from the city.

Despite Tuesday's setback, Bukharbayeva said she was ready to fight on for her son — and to help other mothers find justice.

"I've gone through hell and high water. No matter what, I'll take it to Strasbourg," she said, referring to the European Court of Human Rights.

Do People Burn Books in America?

Cilla McCain has written a post about her book, Murder in Baker Company, on the Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cilla-mccain

Sgt. Convicted in Case that Grew from Army Suicide

Sgt. Convicted in Case that Grew from Army Suicide
to read the article, click here.

--submitted by Cilla McCain