A US military judge has found a Marine guilty of sexual misconduct but not of rape after allegations of gang-raping a woman in Japan, the military said yesterday.
The case in Hiroshima was one of a series of alleged crimes by US troops that has stirred public anger in Japan, a close US ally.
Lance Corporal Larry Dean, 20, one of four servicemen being court-martialed over the alleged incident, was found guilty of “wrongful sexual contact and indecent acts” along with violating military orders.
But the military judge, Major Charles Hale, found him not guilty on charges of rape and conspiracy to rape in the verdict issued on Thursday, a military statement said.
Sentencing proceedings were scheduled to begin yesterday, it said.
It was the first verdict announced for the four servicemen.
A woman, who was 19 at the time of the incident in October, said the soldiers raped her in a car and then stole her money. The court-martial also found Dean not guilty of kidnapping or of receiving stolen property.
The military decided to court-martial the men even though Japanese prosecutors dropped the case, reportedly because the alleged victim had changed her story and was believed to have consented to sex with one man.
The US stations more than 40,000 troops in the country under a security alliance reached after World War II, when Japan renounced the right to wage war.
Japanese leaders have called for tighter controls on US troops after a series of incidents including the murder of a taxi driver by a US deserter and a Marine’s alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl on the southern island of Okinawa.
Japanese prosecutors also declined to press charges in Okinawa after the girl decided not to push ahead with the case, which received intense media attention in Japan.
But the US military also plans to court-martial the Marine in Okinawa, which is home to more than half the US troops in Japan and where tensions run particularly high.
BLOODSHED: North Koreans take extreme measures to avoid being taken prisoner and sometimes execute their own forces, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday said that Russian and North Korean forces sustained heavy losses in fighting in Russia’s southern Kursk region. Ukrainian and Western assessments say that about 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging a mass cross-border incursion in August last year. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy quoted a report from Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi as saying that the battles had taken place near the village of Makhnovka, not far from the Ukrainian border. “In battles yesterday and today near just one village, Makhnovka,
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland on Tuesday expressed concern about “the political crisis” in Georgia, two days after Mikheil Kavelashvili was formally inaugurated as president of the South Caucasus nation, cementing the ruling party’s grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia. “We strongly condemn last week’s violence against peaceful protesters, media and opposition leaders, and recall Georgian authorities’ responsibility to respect human rights and protect fundamental freedoms, including the freedom to assembly and media freedom,” the three ministers wrote in a joint statement. In reaction
BARRIER BLAME: An aviation expert questioned the location of a solid wall past the end of the runway, saying that it was ‘very bad luck for this particular airplane’ A team of US investigators, including representatives from Boeing, on Tuesday examined the site of a plane crash that killed 179 people in South Korea, while authorities were conducting safety inspections on all Boeing 737-800 aircraft operated by the country’s airlines. All but two of the 181 people aboard the Boeing 737-800 operated by South Korean budget airline Jeju Air died in Sunday’s crash. Video showed the aircraft, without its landing gear deployed, crash-landed on its belly and overshoot a runaway at Muan International Airport before it slammed into a barrier and burst into flames. The plane was seen having engine trouble.
REVELRY ON HOLD: Students marched in Belgrade amid New Year’s events, saying that ‘there is nothing to celebrate’ after the train station tragedy killed 15 Thousands of students marched in Belgrade and two other Serbian cities during a New Year’s Eve protest that went into yesterday, demanding accountability over the fatal collapse of a train station roof in November. The incident in the city of Novi Sad occurred on Nov. 1 at a newly renovated train facility, killing 14 people — aged six to 74 — at the scene, while a 15th person died in hospital weeks later. Public outrage over the tragedy has sparked nationwide protests, with many blaming the deaths on corruption and inadequate oversight of construction projects. In Belgrade, university students marched through the capital
RSS