3 J18.2012 I The Blue Banner I 13
Military officer’s rampage reveals double
standard among in war crime cases
Magyan Schechter
mschect@unca.edu
Staff Writer
Army Staff Sgt. Rob-
I ert Bales’name wasn’t
L...,.:#''- ^ released until a week after
he slaughtered 16 Afghan men, women
and children during the night.
In the middle of the night on March
11, Bales, in what U.S. officials called a
rampage through the villages in Kanda
har, allegedly shot, stabbed and set fire
to the bodies of nine children and 11
members of one Afghani family.
In the days since Bales’ name was
released by the media, pictures of his
home in Norwood, Ohio, him attending
a 1992 high school football game and
his Facebook chats have flooded the In
ternet in order to humanize the man that
can now be described as a war criminal.
Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Con
vention defines war crimes as: “Willful
hilling, torture or inhuman treatment,
including... willfully causing great
suffering or serious injury to body or
health, unlawful deportation or transfer
or unlawful confinement of a protected
person, compelling a protected person to
serve in the forces of a hostile power, or
willfully depriving a protected person of
the rights of fair and regular trial, taking
of hostages and extensive destruction
and appropriation of property, not justi
fied by military necessity and carried out
Unlawfully and want only.’’
Post rampage, 38-year-old Bales’
Army Staff Srgt. Robert Bales
• Allegedly shot, stabbed and set fire to 17 Afghan civilians
• Name not released until a week after the incident
• Facebook chats, photographs, personal information and comments
from friends flood the Internet
• American
DOUBLE STANDARD
Army pschiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan
• Killed 12 people and wounded 31 others in 2009 Ford Hood shooting
• Name, handgun and poor performance evaluation released
within hours of the shooting
• Muslim American
home troubles have come to surface.
Reportedly, records show Bales owes
$1.5 million from an arbitration ruling
a few decades ago that found him guilty
of securities fraud.
Reports have surfaced that Bales had
a drinking problem. He once assaulted a
former girlfriend and was also involved
in a hit-and-run car accident.
Friends of Bales describe him as the
once popular guy in high school and
this past week’s actions are very out of
character.
What’s troubling is the fact that not
one ounce of information pertaining to
education, past girlfriends and home
troubles has ever been shared when a
See RAMPAGE on page 14
Another life
lost to the war
against racism
Amarro Ghoni
aghanis@unca.edu -
Staff Writer
Omar Edwards from
New York, Oscar
Grant from California
and Trayvon Martin
from Florida unfortu
nately have something in common
- being wrongly accused and fatally
shot.
George Zimmerman, 28, shot
Martin after assuming he was a
threat to their all-white neighbor
hood.
For Martin’s family, this has been
the single most devastating time of
their life. For the general public, the
white on black situation in this case
has become just another number.
How many accidental deaths do
we need to analyze before we real
ize racism is literally killing us?
People claim because President
Obama is black, we have stomped
out racism. Besides that statement
being utterly hilarious and false, we
are still generations away from a
safe environment for all people.
Martin was on his way from a
7-eleven, holding Skittles and an
iced tea in his hand, when Zimmer
man started to follow him.
Zimmerman, being the watch-
See RACISM on page 14
Stereotyping led an innocent man to spend years in prison
Chris Fish
cafish@unca.edu
'Contributing Writer
It’s 1994, and Damien
Echols is sentenced to
death by lethal injection
for liking Metallica.
It would take 18 years for him to be
once again.
In the recent HBO documentary,
^ dradise Lost 3: Purgatory, filmmak
ers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
allowed the trial of Echols and his two
e^complices, Jessie Misskelley, Jr. and
^son Baldwin, since 1994.
' Since 2000, DNA evidence has exonerated 214 wrongfully
convicted people
17 of those wrondgfully convicted served time on death row
The Innocence Project
“We started this journey to document
the terrible murders of three innocent
boys and the subsequent circus that
followed the arrests and convictions of
Baldwin, Echols and Misskelly,” Ber
linger said in a statement to the press.
“To see our work culminate in the right
ing of this tragic miscarriage of justice
is more than a filmmaker could ask for.’’
About 10,000 people in the United
States may be wrongfully convicted of
serious crimes each year, according to a
recent study by Research News.
There have been 214 exonerations
through DNA evidence since 2000, and
17 of those exonerated served time on
death row, according to the Innocence
Project.
In more than 25 percent of cases in a
National Institute of Justice study, DNA
testing conducted during the criminal
investigation eliminated suspects.
It would be Echols’s destiny to live
in infamy in his country town of West
Memphis, Ark. Within his town, Echols,
along with two other teenage boys,
would become known simply as The
See INNOCENT on page 14