[ALBSA-Info] US soldier jailed for slaying Albanian girl

[Bellona278 at aol.com]

US soldier jailed for slaying Albanian girl

By Steven Silber

  
WUERZBURG, Germany, Aug 1 (Reuters) - A U.S. Army court on Tuesday sentenced 
an American soldier to life in jail without the chance of parole after he 
admitted sodomising and strangling an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl to 
death in Kosovo. 

Staff Sergeant Frank Ronghi, who confessed to murdering Marita Shabiu before 
dumping her bruised and lacerated body in the snow, was handed the stiffest 
possible sentence for a crime committed in January while on peacekeeping duty 
in the Balkans. 

Court spokesman Major Erik Gunhus said the military panel had followed the 
arguments of the prosecution and sentenced Ronghi to life in prison, ignoring 
defence pleas for leniency and the prospect of a future release on parole. 

``I have to thank the military court and the army and everyone,'' said Hamdi 
Shabiu, the girl's father, speaking to reporters outside the court after the 
sentencing. 

``There was nothing suspicious here,'' he added, speaking in Albanian through 
a translator. ``What they did is that they went after justice. It's not the 
army's fault.'' 

Prosecuting lawyer Captain Alton Gwaltney said Ronghi, 36, from Niles, Ohio, 
had deserved the maximum penalty for a premeditated murder committed while 
charged with keeping order between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in the Yugoslav 
province. 

``Your job is to protect society,'' Gwaltney said in his closing arguments to 
a jury panel of six Army officers. 

Ronghi told fellow platoon members he planned to ``grab a little girl and 
rape her, but he would have to kill her to get away with it and blame the 
Serbs,'' said Gwaltney, citing earlier testimony by a fellow soldier. 

Ronghi, a well-built man with short dark hair, said he regretted what he had 
done and the disgrace he had brought on the U.S. Army. He remained stoic as 
the sentencing was read. 

``I don't know what went wrong that day. I'm still trying to look for answers 
myself,'' he had told the jury earlier. 

The court also reduced his rank to private and ordered him out of the army 
with a dishonourable discharge. 

FATHER TELLS OF BETRAYAL 

In the courtroom, the girl's father had told how, like many other ethnic 
Albanians who fled as refugees to Kosovo, his daughter had welcomed the 
NATO-led KFOR (Kosovo Force) peacekeepers when they arrived in the province. 

``We are simple people, but we have seen justice work,'' the Shabiu family 
said in a statement handed to journalists. 

``The man she believed to be her saviour did this to her, took away from her 
and from us what even that horrible war could not -- her life. We wanted him 
locked up for the rest of his life.'' 

Hamdi, who said he had received some financial support from the United States 
for his daughter's burial, also said he would probably seek damages from the 
army. 

The defence had no comment afterwards. They argued Ronghi's environment in 
Kosovo might have contributed to his crime. 

They noted how there had been a number of incidents of excessive violence 
committed by U.S. soldiers in Kosovo as well as beatings and unauthorised 
interrogations of ethnic Albanians, which they said could have led to a 
``negative command climate.'' 

A Weapons Squad leader in the 3rd battalion of the 504th Parachute Infantry 
Regiment, Ronghi also pleaded guilty to indecent acts with a child. 

He was arrested in the Yugoslav province after the bruised and lacerated body 
of Marita Shabiu was found in woodland outside the town of Vitina on January 
13. 

At a pre-trial hearing in February, a sergeant told of how a young private 
under his command alleged that Ronghi had taken him in a Humvee military 
vehicle to an apartment block, loaded up the vehicle out of his sight and 
then driven out of town, where they had dumped the girl's body.