Key soldier in Afghan war crimes case faces court-martial

U.S. helicopter flies near the new found gold mine site in Nor Aaba in Takhar province, November 26, 2010.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - An Army staff sergeant was ordered on Friday to be tried by a military court to face charges that include murdering three unarmed Afghan civilians, keeping body parts as grisly war trophies and beating a whistle-blower who told superiors about widespread hashish use in his unit.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord Commanding Officer Major General Curtis Scaparrotti ordered Stryker Brigade Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, 25, of Billings, Montana, to stand trial. No date was set.

Gibbs is one of five soldiers from the brigade charged with murder. Twelve soldiers in all face charges in the most serious prosecutions of alleged war atrocities by U.S. military deployed in Afghanistan since the war began in late 2001.

The Stryker Brigade cases, with some 4,000 photographs sealed from public view including some reportedly of soldiers posing with Afghan casualties, have drawn comparisons to the inflammatory Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq in 2004.

Gibbs faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment without parole for charges that include of premeditated murder in the deaths of three unarmed Afghan civilians, including a cleric, in the Afghanistan villages of La Muhammad Kalay in January 2010, of Khari Kleyl in February 2010 and at Qualaday in May 2010, according to court documents.

According to statements given to Army investigators by co-defendants, Gibbs allegedly set up the murders by placing grenades and an AK-47 with the bodies, and then shooting the bodies or ordering platoon members to shoot the bodies.

Gibbs allegedly kept fingers, severed with medical shears, and displayed them at platoon mates to intimidate them.

Gibbs faces a dozen other charges that include keeping body parts such as teeth, finger and leg bones as war trophies.

The cases began as an investigation into hashish use by members of what was then known as the 5th Stryker Brigade, but grew into a probe of what prosecutors described as an infantry unit run amok.

Phillip Stackhouse, a civilian attorney defending Gibbs, has described Gibbs' involvement as legitimate combat killings, He was not immediately available for comment on the order.

In a related action on Friday, a three-member Army Court of Criminal Appeals ordered that a preliminary Article 32 hearing of the youngest Stryker Brigade soldier charged with murder, Private First Class Andrew Holmes, 20, could continue.

The appeals court had ruled in mid-December that Holmes had no right to use the sealed photos in a preliminary Article 32 hearing on the dead Afghan civilian he's accused of killing.

Holmes's attorney Dan Conway said he'll appeal the decision to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, the nation's highest military court.

"The photographs in question provide exculpatory evidence that PFC Holmes did not cause the death of the victim in this case," Conway said, adding that Holmes was "not a part of any conspiracy to murder innocent Afghanis. He's a young man that was trying to do his job and got unwittingly used as a cover story."

Two of the 12 Stryker Brigade soldiers have been sentenced after court-martial trials.

On December 1, U.S. Army Medic Robert Stevens was ordered to serve nine months at this home base, demoted to E-1 private but allowed to remain in the military.

Corporal Emmitt Quintal was ordered to be discharged this week for bad conduct after serving a 90-day sentence of hard labor and demoted to E-2 private.

(Editing by Peter Bohan)