A US army sergeant has been found guilty by a military court of negligent homicide in the killing of unarmed Iraqi detainees during a raid in May 2006, an army spokesman said Saturday.
Staff Sergeant Raymond Girouard, 24, was not convicted however of the main charge of premeditated murder, which could have sent him to prison for life, said Sergeant Terry Webster, a spokesman for the Fort Campbell military base in Kentucky, where the proceedings unfolded.
Girouard was also found guilty of obstruction of justice and of disobeying orders.
He now faces a possible maximum 21 years in prison.
Three other soldiers who had already pleaded guilty in the case testified against their former squad leader during the trial, saying Girouard gathered them in a room in a house to tell them that the detainees would be shot, and the deaths would be covered up.
They said he urged them to remove their handcuffs to mask their crime as an attempt to stop the prisoners' escape.
Girouard denied the accusations.
But he admitted during the trial that he tried to help cover up the murders after arriving on the scene, cutting one of his soldiers with a knife and punching another in the face to make it look like a struggle had occurred.
"I was looking out for the well-being of my soldiers," he had testified.
"I had to help him be believable. He screwed up real bad ... I knew he was going to go down hard," he told the court.
The two soldiers who shot the prisoners pleaded guilty to murder and were each sentenced to 18 years in prison, in exchange for their testimony in a plea agreement. A third soldier was sentenced to nine months in prison in the case.
