Trial dates set for U.S. soldiers

FORT HOOD, Texas -- A 4th Infantry Division soldier charged with manslaughter in the alleged drowning of an Iraqi civilian in January will go to trial here next week.

Sgt. 1st Class Tracy Perkins, 33, Scott City, Mo., also faces court-martial charges of aggravated assault, conspiracy and lying to Army investigators. His trial is set to begin Tuesday.

Perkins and 1st Lt. Jack Saville, both soldiers in the 3rd Brigade Combat Team at Fort Carson, Colo., are accused of pushing 19-year-old Zaidoun Hassoun and his cousin off a bridge into the Tigris River in Samarra as punishment for violating curfew.

The assault charges pertain to the cousin, Marwan Hassoun, who says Zaidoun died just out of his reach.

Perkins faces a second assault charge for allegedly forcing another Iraqi man off a bridge over the Tigris in December 2003 near Balad.

Saville, 24, also arraigned in military court at Fort Hood on Tuesday, will go to trial in January.

Neither man entered pleas Tuesday, nor did they choose whether to have their cases heard by a judge alone or by juries made up of other soldiers.

Prosecutors say Saville, a West Point graduate whose family lives in Tappahannock, Va., ordered the men pushed off the bridge. Perkins is accused of pushing Zaidoun Hassoun.

Both Saville and Perkins are charged with making false statements for telling investigators that the men were searched but then released on the road.

Prosecutors say the soldiers later said they saw the Hassouns alive on the river bank, but denied that they had been pushed off the bridge.

Defense lawyers contend that Zaidoun Hassoun safely reached shore after the Jan. 3 incident. They have argued that the Army investigators botched the case by not positively identifying a body or doing an autopsy.

At a July hearing at Fort Carson, investigators admitted they never saw a body purported to be Hassoun's, and that they instead relied on the word of relatives and a family videotape that shows a corpse in a coffin.

In addition, three soldiers on patrol that night testified they saw two Iraqis climbing out of the river, but that investigators never asked them about it. The soldiers said the investigators only wanted to talk about who had forced the men off the bridge.

On Tuesday, most of the discussion was on Perkins' case.

Capt. Joshua Norris, representing Perkins, argued that the manslaughter charge was not properly presented to the commanding general, Maj. Gen. James Thurman.

Norris contended that a report from the hearing officer at Fort Carson, which stated that the manslaughter count was not supported by evidence, had been buried within a 6-inch-thick file presented to Thurman when he was deciding whether Perkins should be charged.

Thurman's staff attorney, Lt. Col. Tracy Barnes, said he and Thurman thoroughly discussed the report.

"This is not a run-of-the-mill case," said Barnes, the only witness heard Tuesday. "We discussed it at length because there were so many intricacies."

Col. Gregory Gross, the military judge presiding over Perkins' case, later denied a motion that the charge be sent back to Thurman for reconsideration.

If convicted on all counts, Saville and Perkins face as much as 29 years in a military prison.

Three officers and two enlisted soldiers involved the Hassoun case have already received nonjudicial punishment that did not include jail time.