[ALBSA-Info] US soldier rapes and kills kosovo girl

[Adrian]

U.S. Soldier Charged With Killing Kosovo Girl  

By MELISSA EDDY
.c The Associated Press 

VITINA, Yugoslavia (Jan. 16) - An American soldier serving with the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo was charged Sunday with sexually assaulting and killing an 11-year-old ethnic Albanian girl, the U.S. military announced.

Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi is accused of murder and indecent acts with a child, Col. Ellis Golson told reporters. It is the first time a peacekeeper from any country has been accused of such serious crimes since the 50,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force entered the province on June 12.

The incident threatens relations between the Americans and Kosovo civilians whom the peacekeepers were sent to protect. The peacekeepers were sent in after the 78-day NATO bombing campaign forced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to halt his bloody crackdown against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

''We don't want them here to give us security if they are going to do this,'' said Muharram Samakova, a neighbor of the girl's family.

Ronghi, 35, is a weapons squad leader assigned to A Company, 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment from Fort Bragg, N.C., Golson said. His hometown was not immediately available. He was being held in detention at nearby Camp Bondsteel pending transfer to the U.S. Army's confinement facility in Mannheim, Germany.

The girl's body was found late Thursday in the countryside near the city of Vitina, 45 miles southeast of the provincial capital, Pristina, the army said. A senior U.N. official who asked not to be named said Saturday that the girl appeared to have been raped before she was killed.

In Vitina, the slain girl's father, Hamdi Shabiu, showed reporters a photo of his daughter's corpse that he said a U.S. officer brought him late Thursday, when he was informed of her death. The girl's face appeared battered and bruised, with a small cut on her forehead.

Shabiu said he last saw his daughter early Thursday when she left to go to the market. She did not return. Neighbors in an apartment complex across the street told him she had been killed in the basement of the building.

''They killed her 20 meters (yards) away from the house,'' he said. ''They took her - she was only 11 1-2 years old.''

Serbian state-run television, which regularly criticizes the NATO peacekeeping mission, said Sunday evening that the case ''exposed an unprecedented disgrace.''

It was too early to tell how the incident would affect relations between the Americans and ethnic Albanians. Other similar cases - like the rape of a 12-year-old Japanese girl by three U.S. servicemen in 1995, for example - have sparked rallies against the U.S. military presence.

The U.S. peacekeepers are widely seen as heroes by Kosovo Albanians because of Washington's role in the NATO bombing campaign. On Sunday, groups of ethnic Albanian children could be seen milling around U.S. military vehicles, laughing, chatting and playing with the soldiers.

However, neighbors of the Shabiu family were outraged.

Hxsen Islami said local residents had filed complaints with the U.S. command in Vitina about male soldiers searching young girls for weapons. He said the complaints had gotten no response.

''I'm sorry, but they are touching the girls,'' Islami said.

U.S. military officials at the main headquarters at Camp Bondsteel said they knew nothing about such complaints. Brig. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the head of Kosovo's American forces, met Saturday night with community leaders in Vitina and offered his condolences to the family.

The army said Sunday it will appoint an officer to conduct a pretrial investigation. The investigator eventually will recommend whether the charges should be referred to a court martial. Ronghi could be tried before a military judge or a panel of officers.

 AP-NY-01-16-00 1659EST

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