The snipers ate, debriefed and changed their clothes. Some got a few hours of sleep. Hand, who had been awake for 45 hours, testified that he slept from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. then "scrounged together enough coffee" to have a cup.
The snipers spent a restless, sleep-deprived May 10 cleaning equipment and preparing for the next mission outside the wire, scheduled for that night. "In terms of the patrol base," Hand testified, "you really can't sleep, there is too much movement, too much noise and there is no shade unless you make some."
Murphy, still recovering from the previous day's dehydration, told Hensley, the leader of the sniper section, he could not make that night's mission. Another sniper, Sgt. Robert Redfern, volunteered to take Murphy's place.
Murphy, whom Vela later described as "like a brother to me," saw Vela just before the mission. Vela was readying his gear. He looked drained. Murphy asked Vela, "Are you good, man?"
Hensley, Vela, Sandoval, Hand and Redfern left Patrol Base Jurf at around 10 p.m. and arrived at their "hide" at 2 a.m. on the morning of May 11. The hide was a grassy hill next to a run-down pump house on the banks of the Euphrates. An infantry company soon began raiding a nearby house in a futile effort to locate insurgent rockets.
In the field, snipers sleep in shifts, or "rest cycles," with one man keeping guard while the others try to rest. By 10 a.m. the next morning, the guard on duty was Vela.
Vela testified that he remembered looking over a nearby berm and then in another direction at some children playing a few hundred meters away. When he turned back around toward the berm, Khudair, the vegetable farmer, "was just there."
Vela froze. Sandoval, who had been woken by the sound of the Iraqi's approach, motioned toward Vela's gun. Taking the signal, Vela pointed the 9 mm pistol at the farmer's face.
Sandoval woke up Redfern. Redfern and Vela waved the Iraqi into the hide, forced him down on his stomach and put the corner of the plastic poncho over his head. Vela stood over the man with the pistol, while Redfern ran his hands over Khudair's shoulders, arms, sides, back and chest in a cursory search. No weapons.
Vela woke Hensley and told him an unarmed Iraqi was in the hide. Hensley stood up, walked over to the Iraqi -- and from a standing position dropped a knee into his back with the full force of his body.
Khudair threw his head back, gasping for wind. "Staff Sgt. Hensley grabbed him by the mouth," Vela testified, "and told him to shut up or he was going to kill him."
Hensley wrapped parachute cord around the Iraqi's hands and Redfern dragged him deeper into the snipers' hide. At this point, Redfern spotted a boy approaching and waved him into the hide site as well. The snipers put him on his stomach, so the two Iraqis formed an L-shape on the ground with both of their heads under the corner of the poncho.
Hensley then dispatched Sandoval and Redfern to the pump house, 15 to 20 meters away, to provide security. Vela handed his pistol to Sandoval, who was armed with a bolt-action rifle that could only hold five rounds without reloading.
Vela said Hensley sat down on the berm for a moment. He then got up and radioed their superior officer, Didier. Hensley reported that he had spotted an Iraqi nearby armed with an AK-47. But Vela couldn't see anyone who matched that description. Vela alerted Hand, who was fading in and out of sleep on a nearby berm, that Hensley "might have seen something." Then Hensley ordered Vela to retrieve his pistol from Sandoval in the pump house.
A half-hour after the 17-year-old Iraqi boy entered the hide, Sandoval and Redfern saw him pass by their position in the pump house as he walked home. Thinking that both Iraqis had been released, Sandoval peered around the pump house wall to look into the hide. Khudair was still there. Vela was sitting on his rear, with one leg cocked up and an elbow resting on his knee, holding the pistol in one hand.
Inside the hide, Hensley radioed Didier a second time, saying an insurgent was moving closer to their position. Hensley asked permission to do a "close kill" to avoid being compromised.
Vela then looked around, but still didn't see any armed insurgent. "I was just really confused about what he was saying," Vela testified.
Hensley untied the Iraqi. "I thought we were going to let him go," Vela told the Army court.
"Are you ready?" Hensley allegedly asked Vela.
Hensley stepped aside. "Shoot," he said.
Vela claimed during testimony that he doesn't remember pulling the trigger. "It took me a second to realize that the shot had come from the pistol and it was in my hand."
Hensley radioed to Didier that the snipers had killed an insurgent. Meanwhile, the Iraqi's body convulsed. Hensley "kind of laughed" at the spectacle, according to Vela. Hensley then "[punched] the guy in the throat, and said, 'Shoot him again,' which I did."
Vela testified that after he shot the man for the second time, Hensley pulled an AK-47 out of his rucksack and placed it on the body. The snipers then agreed on a story about the shooting consistent with Hensley's radio calls.
Murphy, the soldier who had stayed behind because of dehydration, was sitting on a Humvee when the snipers trailed back into Patrol Base Jurf. The men were so soaked with sweat that Murphy thought they had waded through a canal.
"Hey, what's up, man?" Murphy asked Vela. But Vela just walked past his friend in silence. In testimony Murphy described Vela as "detached, somber, serious."
In late June 2007, less than two months after Khudair's death, Flores and Petta informed military authorities that the sniper section might be using drop weapons. That led to investigation of the circumstances of several of the unit's kills, which led in turn to the arrest of Sandoval, Hensley and Vela.
Sandoval was charged with murder for the deaths on April 27 and May 11, but convicted only of planting command wire in connection with the April 27 killing. He served about a month and a half in prison. The Army charged Hensley with three murders for the shootings of April 14, April 27 and May 11. He was convicted of planting a weapon, for placing the AK-47 next to Khudair, and insubordination. He was sentenced to time served and busted down to sergeant.
On February 10, 2008, however, Vela was sentenced to 10 years in a military prison for the murder of Khudair.
Top battalion leaders, who had to sign off on the charges, have faced no serious questions about whether their demand for more bodies, their vague rules of engagement or the confusion sown by the secret program might have contributed to the events of spring 2007. U.S. Army Alaska spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Allen said Balcavage and Knight were unavailable for an interview.
Hand, one of the snipers in the hide on May 11, later testified that he believes his "main responsibility is to take care of my subordinates." But the battalion leaders, he said, "have been very lax in their care of anybody except themselves."
"If you have never been outside the wire, you really have no basis [to judge]," said Hand. "You've never been in a life-or-death situation where you have had to count on the guy to your left and right ... You see stuff out there that no one back here is going to see."
Hensley, meanwhile, is back on active duty. Now a sergeant, he is stationed in Georgia, where he is an instructor for Army Rangers.
About the writer
Mark Benjamin is a national correspondent for Salon based in Washington, D.C. Read his other articles here.
Christopher Weaver is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C.
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