New York Times, 13-1-2008

Attraverso l’America... echi mortali di guerra… I reduci sparano al ritorno a casa

Come già capitato in Viet Nam, i reduci delle forze Usa di ritorno dai fronti iracheno-afghano recano i segni di una guerra che ogni giorno presenta il proprio conto fatto di crimini di guerra ed inutili atrocità verso la popolazione civile.

Sono aumentati del 90% in 6 anni, per 3/4 reduci da Iraq e Afghanistan. Individuati 121 i casi, le vittime mogli e bambini

NEW YORK - Almeno 121 veterani di guerra dell’Iraq e dell’Afghanistan hanno commesso un omicidio dopo il loro ritorno a casa. Li ha contati il New York Times, rivelando che gli omicidi da parte di ex soldati in missione sono aumentati del 90% negli ultimi sei anni, dall'invasione dell'Afghanistan nel 2001, passando da 184 a 349. E in tre quarti dei nuovi casi (165) sono coinvolti proprio reduci dall'Iraq e dall'Afghanistan. In molti di questi casi, i traumi riportati durante il servizio all’estero e lo stress - con l’alcolismo e altri problemi di riadattamento familiare - fanno da sfondo alla tragedia. Tre quarti dei veterani coinvolti in casi di omicidio erano ancora militari quando hanno commesso i delitti, compiuti usando pistole in oltre la metà dei casi.

Le vittime sono in gran parte le mogli o le fidanzate, i figli o altri familiari stretti. La più piccola è Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, una bambina di due anni uccisa in Texas dal padre ventenne, tornato in patria dopo aver riportato traumi al cervello e aver perso un piede durante un bombardamento a Falluja. Un quarto delle vittime sono altri soldati, come Richard Davis, accoltellato e poi dato alle fiamme da altri veterani, il giorno dopo che erano tutti tornati dall'Iraq.

Né il Pentagono né il dipartimento alla Giustizia si sono interessati di questi delitti, che sono stati perseguiti non dalla giustizia militare ma dai tribunali civili degli Stati in cui sono accaduti.
Un portavoce dell'esercito ha detto che lo studio non offre un quadro completo della situazione. Circa 25 dei 121 casi di omicidio sono derivati da guida pericolosa o in stato di ubriachezza. La maggior parte degli omicidi non aveva precedenti ma in alcuni dei casi, aggiunge il Times, «il fatto che fossero di ritorno dalla guerra non ha in apparenza alcuna relazione con il crimine commesso».



Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles

By DEBORAH SONTAG and LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Published: January 13, 2008

Late one night in the summer of 2005, Matthew Sepi, a 20-year-old Iraq combat veteran, headed out to a 7-Eleven in the seedy Las Vegas neighborhood where he had settled after leaving the Army.

This particular 7-Eleven sits in the shadow of the Stratosphere casino-hotel in a section of town called the Naked City. By day, the area, littered with malt liquor cans, looks depressed but not menacing. By night, it becomes, in the words of a local homicide detective, “like Falluja

Mr. Sepi did not like to venture outside too late. But, plagued by nightmares about an Iraqi civilian killed by his unit, he often needed alcohol to fall asleep. And so it was that night, when, seized by a gut feeling of lurking danger, he slid a trench coat over his slight frame — and tucked an assault rifle inside it.

“Matthew knew he shouldn’t be taking his AK-47 to the 7-Eleven,” Detective Laura Andersen said, “but he was scared to death in that neighborhood, he was military trained and, in his mind, he needed the weapon to protect himself.”

Head bowed, Mr. Sepi scurried down an alley, ignoring shouts about trespassing on gang turf. A battle-weary grenadier who was still legally under-age, he paid a stranger to buy him two tall cans of beer, his self-prescribed treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

As Mr. Sepi started home, two gang members, both large and both armed, stepped out of the darkness. Mr. Sepi said in an interview that he spied the butt of a gun, heard a boom, saw a flash and “just snapped.”

In the end, one gang member lay dead, bleeding onto the pavement. The other was wounded. And Mr. Sepi fled, “breaking contact” with the enemy, as he later described it. With his rifle raised, he crept home, loaded 180 rounds of ammunition into his car and drove until police lights flashed behind him.

“Who did I take fire from?” he asked urgently. Wearing his Army camouflage pants, the diminutive young man said he had been ambushed and then instinctively “engaged the targets.” He shook. He also cried.

“I felt very bad for him,” Detective Andersen said.

Nonetheless, Mr. Sepi was booked, and a local newspaper soon reported: “Iraq veteran arrested in killing.”

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”

Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

A quarter of the victims were fellow service members, including Specialist Richard Davis of the Army, who was stabbed repeatedly and then set ablaze, his body hidden in the woods by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq.