LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire – A US soldier found guility of the gange rape and murder of an Iraqi girl received a 110 year jail sentence today, although the victim’s family hoped for the death penalty.
The family of a teenage Iraqi girl gang raped and murdered by U.S. troops said on Sunday they were disappointed that a soldier sentenced to 110 years in jail for the crime did not receive the death penalty.
Private Jesse Spielman was found guilty of four counts of murder, rape, conspiracy to commit rape, and housebreaking with the intent to commit rape by a U.S. military court in Kentucky on Saturday over the March 2006 attack.
Abeer Qassim al-Janabiat, her parents and younger sister were shot dead in Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad. The crime outraged Iraqis and significantly increased tensions with U.S. forces in Iraq.
“We were expecting the death penalty against those criminals and the place to carry out the sentence is where the incident happened,” Janabiat’s cousin, Abu Ammar, told Reuters.
Her uncle, Hadi Abdullah, said the family wished the sentence could be appealed so that the death penalty could be imposed for all those responsible.
